Penny Wise (1930) Review: Joe Cook is a Beautiful Idiot

If you have fifteen minutes to spare and love old-school chaotic nonsense, Penny Wise is absolutely worth your time today. But if you need a plot that makes actual sense, you will probably hate this with a passion. 🙄

The setup is so dumb it is almost beautiful. A department store owner tells his kids that "any idiot" could run his business while he is gone.

Enter Joe Cook. He gets hired specifically because he meets those exact qualifications.

Honestly, Cook is like a human cartoon in this. He has this weird, fast-talking energy that reminds me a bit of the silly nonsense in Plumb Goofy, but with more ties and hats.

There is this one scene where a lady wants to buy gloves, and Cook somehow turns it into a weird magic trick. I had to rewind it twice because I still do not understand how he got the glove to fly behind his back.

The film looks kinda dusty, and the sound has that scratchy 1930s hiss that makes me feel like I am sitting in a damp basement. But that just adds to the charm, I think.

It feels like a lost relic from a time when filmmakers just threw things at the wall to see what would stick. It is way more fun than other shorts of the era like The Cat's Out, which felt a bit too dry for my taste.

Babe London is also in this, though she does not get nearly enough screen time. She mostly just stands there looking deeply confused by everything Cook is doing, which was probably her actual reaction on set.

Some of the jokes are incredibly corny. Like, painfully bad dad-joke level stuff.

But then Cook does this tiny little eye roll at the camera, and suddenly I am laughing again. It's greatest charm is how it don't care about logic at all.

The ending just sort of... happens. The store is a total mess, people are running around, and then the screen just fades to black.

It is not high art, but it is a blast if you just want to turn your brain off. 🤷‍♂️