Business and Pleasure: Will Rogers on a Boat

Is this worth a watch?

Honestly, only if you are a completionist for Will Rogers movies. If you want a tight comedy, you might get bored. If you like seeing how Hollywood tried to mash up business rivalries with exotic desert adventures, then sure, go for it.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Business and Pleasure (1932) through its definitive frames.

The whole thing feels like a vacation that got interrupted by a script meeting. Earl Tinker is our lead, and he's exactly the kind of plain-spoken guy you expect. He sells razor blades. That’s the high stakes here. Razor blades.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Business and Pleasure (1932) through its definitive frames.

It’s funny how they try to make a guy selling shaving gear feel like a high-powered tycoon. You can almost see the studio heads pushing for more "action" to spice up the boardroom talk. That’s why we end up in the Mediterranean, I guess.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Business and Pleasure (1932) through its definitive frames.

The femme fatale character shows up, and she's clearly doing her best to play the part. But the chemistry? It’s just not there. She feels like she’s in a completely different movie than the rest of the cast. It’s like she wandered off the set of The Battle of the Sexes and just never left.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Business and Pleasure (1932) through its definitive frames.

Then there’s the desert tribe stuff. Suddenly we are doing the whole "feuding factions" routine. It’s jarring. One minute you're talking about market competition, the next you're watching guys ride horses across sand dunes.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Business and Pleasure (1932) through its definitive frames.

Boris Karloff is in this, which is the only reason I really paid attention in the second half. He is always watchable, even when the material is this thin. He brings a weird gravity to the desert scenes that they really didn't earn.

• The razor blade jokes get old fast.
• The transition from a cruise ship to the desert is basically nonexistent.
• Will Rogers looks like he's just happy to be on a boat.
• The pacing is all over the place.

There's a scene where they’re haggling over something trivial, and the camera just stays on them way too long. It’s almost like they forgot to yell cut. You can feel the actors waiting for a direction that never came. It's not necessarily bad, just... silly.

I kept thinking about Ranson's Folly while watching this, mainly because of the way these older films handle "exotic" locations. They treat them like stage backdrops. It’s all very theatrical and not grounded in any reality I recognize.

If you have nothing better to do on a rainy Tuesday, it’s a harmless way to kill an hour. Just don't expect it to make much sense by the time the credits roll. 🚢🌵