The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood: A Dusty Trip Through Tinseltown

Is this thing worth a watch?

Honestly, only if you’re a sucker for 1930s studio chaos. If you want a tight story or something that actually makes sense, you’re going to hate it. It’s for the folks who like seeing how movies were put together when Hollywood was still figuring out how to make a feature feel like a feature.

The whole premise is just an excuse to cram these two families into a studio setting. Kitty becomes a star, and suddenly the Cohens and Kellys are everywhere. It’s loud. It’s messy.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood (1932) through its definitive frames.

Wait, was that Boris Karloff?

Yeah, he’s in this. It’s pretty weird seeing him pop up in something so light and goofy. He feels like he wandered in from a completely different movie, maybe something more like The Mask. He looks a bit bored, honestly. Can you blame him?

There is this one scene where they are just running around the set, and the extras in the background have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to be doing. One guy is just leaning against a fake wall, looking at his watch. I bet he just wanted to go home.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood (1932) through its definitive frames.

• The dialogue is fast but mostly just noise.
• The set design is strangely flat, like a cardboard box.
• I’m pretty sure someone trips over their own feet in the background and nobody even reacts.

It reminds me a little bit of the energy in On the Loose, where things just sort of happen because the script said so. It doesn't have the grit of The Crimson Skull, that’s for sure. It’s just fluff.

The pacing is all over the place. One minute they’re screaming at each other, the next we’re watching some weird musical bit that goes on for way too long. My eyes kind of glazed over during the third song. It felt like the film was just trying to kill time until the reel ended.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood (1932) through its definitive frames.

I caught a glimpse of an old prop in the corner of one shot that looked like it belonged in The Stranglers of Paris. It’s funny how they recycled everything back then. Nothing was ever thrown away.

It’s not a good movie by any stretch. But it’s a weird one. If you’re bored on a Sunday and want to see what a frantic, low-stakes comedy looked like before the world got so serious, give it a shot. Just don’t expect to remember much about it by Monday.