Here Comes Cookie: 64 Minutes of Pure Gracie Allen Chaos

You should probably watch this if you have about an hour and you're tired of movies that try to be 'important.' It’s a perfect pick for anyone who loves that specific brand of 1930s screwball comedy where logic goes to die. If you need a plot that actually resolves things in a realistic way, you will absolutely hate this movie. 🤡

The whole thing is basically a vehicle for Gracie Allen to be as confusing as possible. George Barbier plays her dad, a millionaire who is losing his mind because his younger daughter wants to marry a gold-digger. His solution is to hand over his entire fortune to Gracie for 'safe-keeping.'

I mean, has this man ever met his daughter? It’s a terrible plan, but it’s the only way we get a movie, I guess.

Gracie immediately thinks the family has gone broke. She decides to be 'helpful' by turning their giant mansion into a boarding house for every unemployed vaudeville actor she can find. This is where the movie just stops being a story and becomes a variety show.

It’s a bit like Flirtation Walk in that it loves its musical interludes, but way more low-rent and weird. You get these random groups showing up, like the Six Candreya Brothers and the Six Olympics. One minute they are talking about money, the next minute six guys are doing backflips in the hallway for no reason at all.

George Burns is here too, playing George. He spends most of the movie just leaning against things and holding a cigar. You can tell he’s the only one who knows how ridiculous the script is.

There is this one scene where Gracie is trying to explain her 'logic' about how to save money. I had to rewind it because her sentences are so looped and broken that they almost start to sound like a weird kind of philosophy. It’s brilliant in a way that feels totally accidental.

The pacing is all over the place. It’s only 64 minutes long, but the middle section feels like it could have been twenty minutes or three hours. It just depends on how much you enjoy watching people in 1930s costumes fall over each other.

I honestly forgot about the gold-digger subplot for about thirty minutes. The movie forgets too. It’s much more interested in a guy named 'Big Boy' Williams and a bunch of people trying to rehearse a play in the living room.

Some of the jokes are so old they’ve actually become funny again. There's a bit with a tax collector that feels like it belongs in a completely different film, maybe something like Good Morning, Judge. But it works because the energy is so high.

Is it a good movie? Not really. It’s messy and the ending just kind of happens because they ran out of film. But it’s got a personality, which is more than I can say for most of the stuff on streaming right now.

I noticed that the background extras in the big crowd scenes look genuinely confused. There’s a shot where a lady in the back is just staring at the camera like she wandered in off the street. It’s those little mistakes that make these old Paramount films feel real.

If you’ve seen The Big House or something serious from that era, this will feel like a fever dream. It’s the kind of movie you put on when you’re sick and you just want to see people be silly.

Things I actually wrote down while watching:

• The hats in this movie are distractingly large.
• Gracie Allen’s voice is like a very charming flute that never stops playing.
• Why are there so many acrobats in the 1930s? Were they just everywhere back then?
• George Burns’ timing is so perfect it makes everyone else look like they are lagging.
• The 'Three Jacks and a Queen' segment went on about two minutes too long.
• I’m pretty sure the plot about the gold-digger just evaporates into thin air.
• The house is so big it has its own zip code.

It’s weirdly comforting to watch something so unpolished. There’s no 'profound exploration' here. It’s just a bunch of talented vaudevillians getting a paycheck and having a blast.

Anyway, if you like Gracie Allen, you’ve probably already seen this. If you haven't, it’s a good one to have on in the background while you’re doing something else. You won't miss much if you blink.

The ending is just a giant musical number where everyone is happy for no reason. It’s stupid and I loved it. 🎩