For the Love of Pete: A Messy, Comic-Strip Blur

Should you watch this?

Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for mid-century comic strip adaptations or you’re just really into the specific brand of chaos that comes with old-school shorts. If you hate slapstick or get annoyed when a movie feels like it’s being held together by duct tape and sheer willpower, skip it. It's a relic, plain and simple.

The whole thing starts at a train station. Joe Palooka is doing his thing—handling bags, being simple, being Joe—and then a champion boxer shows up. Naturally, there’s a dog involved. The dog ruins the guy's clothes, there’s a punch, and suddenly our boy Joe is in the middle of a mess. It’s barely a plot, but it moves fast enough that you don't really have time to ask questions like, "Wait, why is that dog so aggressive?"

Shemp Howard is in this, which is basically the only reason I clicked play. He brings that manic, flailing energy that makes even the weaker scenes feel like they’re vibrating. There’s a moment where he just stands there looking confused that feels more genuine than half the dialogue in the rest of the film. It’s the kind of performance that reminds me of Ha! Ha! Ha!—just pure, unfiltered physical comedy.

The pacing is genuinely weird. It feels like someone took a feature-length script and just deleted every third page. One minute we’re at the train station, the next we’re deep in some kind of misunderstanding that feels like it belonged in A Temperamental Wife. It just jumps around without bothering to explain how we got from A to B.

I found myself staring at the background extras a lot. At one point, there’s a group of people in the station who look like they’ve been told to stand still for three hours. They don't even blink when the champion starts throwing his weight around. It’s oddly hypnotic, like they’re waiting for a bus that’s never going to show up.

Some random notes:

• The dog is the best actor in the cast, and I’m not even joking.
• The sound mixing is a bit crunchy. You can hear the film grain in the audio if that makes sense.
• Joe Palooka’s "everyman" act gets a little tired by the halfway mark.
• Everything is just a little bit too loud.

It doesn't have the grit of The Fighting Champ, but it’s got a weird, frantic charm. It’s not trying to win an award. It’s just trying to keep you from falling asleep during your lunch break. Does it succeed? Sort of. It’s definitely memorable, if only because it feels so disconnected from reality.

I think the directors were just throwing things at the wall. Some of it sticks, most of it hits the floor. But there's something kind of sweet about that, right? It doesn't have the polish that makes modern stuff feel so sterile.