Just My Luck (1935) Review: Indestructible Rubber and Silly Pratfalls

If you have a soft spot for dusty, black-and-white slapstick where guys in oversized suits fall over tables, Just My Luck (1935) might keep you awake on a lazy Sunday. But if you can't stand squeaky 1930s sound design and gags you can see coming from a mile away, you should probably stay far away.

The whole thing centers on Homer Crow, this quirky inventor who gets kicked out of his lab job. But he's got a secret weapon: a formula for indestructible rubber called... Durex. Yes, they call it Durex, and I giggled every single time they said it with a completely straight face. 😅

Naturally, some very shady corporate guys want to steal his invention. This leads to about an hour of Homer running around, tripping over rugs, and getting into highly staged "accidents."

The physical comedy is... well, it's incredibly loud. The sound effects when someone gets hit on the head sound like a wooden spoon hitting a dry watermelon.

A Few Things That Caught My Eye

Look out for 'Snub' Pollard in the cast list. If you know your silent film history, seeing him here is a bit bittersweet, like watching an old rock star play a local county fair.

There is this one scene in the laboratory near the beginning that just goes on forever. Homer is mixing liquids and everything is smoking, and you just know it's going to blow up in his face. It takes so long to happen that the suspense actually dies, goes to heaven, and comes back. 🧪

The frantic energy actually reminded me a bit of Lost in Limehouse, though this one has way less budget and far more soot on people's faces.

And the editing is incredibly choppy. Sometimes a character will start a sentence in one room and finish it in another, and the audio level completely jumps.

"You can almost feel the editors trying to piece together a coherent scene from three different takes where the actors kept laughing."

I do love Homer's face though. He has these massive, worried eyes that make him look like a startled owl whenever things go wrong.

But let's be real, the plot doesn't really matter here. It's just a loose clothesline to hang a bunch of stunts on, not unlike some of the early comedy scenes in The Wedding March, just without any of the artistic pretension.

Random Observations from My Notebook:

• The indestructible rubber looks suspiciously like a regular old bicycle tire.
• One extra in the background clearly forgot his line and just stared at the camera for three whole seconds before walking away.
• The villain's mustache is so comically evil it deserves its own billing in the credits.
• The climax involves a runaway car that moves at approximately four miles per hour, yet everyone screams like they are on a runaway roller coaster.

It's not a masterpiece, and honestly, some of the jokes are so old they probably have dust on them. But if you want something light and don't mind a bit of vintage silliness, it's a harmless way to spend an hour.