While the Cat's Away: A frantic mess of a short

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you’re a completionist for old-school slapstick or you have a weird, deep-seated need to see Shemp Howard try to act like a functioning adult. If you want a tight, well-oiled comedy, look elsewhere. If you want to see a dusty apartment get progressively destroyed while two guys panic? You’re in the right place. 🏠

The premise is as thin as a slice of deli ham. Two guys get a phone call, realize they’ve trashed the joint, and suddenly it’s a race against the clock. It feels less like a script and more like a series of people bumping into furniture.

There’s this one moment where they’re trying to clean up a spill, and the physical comedy just... stalls out. It goes on for about thirty seconds too long, and you start feeling embarrassed for them. Not because they’re failing at cleaning, but because the movie is clearly begging for a laugh that isn't coming.

Shemp Howard is doing his classic thing, which is basically vibrating with anxiety. It’s always funny, but here he’s trapped in a bit that feels like it belonged in a different, better movie—maybe something like Sweethearts, where the chaos felt a bit more earned.

I couldn't help but notice how oddly empty the apartment looks. It’s supposed to be a bachelor pad post-party, but it just looks like a room where someone moved the chairs to the middle of the floor and called it a day. It’s a very specific kind of lazy set dressing. 🤷‍♂️

There is no attempt at a moral here. It doesn't want to teach you about marriage or honesty. It just wants to see if a man can hide a week of bad decisions in under ten minutes. Usually, the answer is a hard no.

The bits that stuck:

• The way they look at the camera when they realize the clock is ticking.
• The sheer amount of dust they kick up just by running in circles.
• It feels like they filmed the whole thing in a single afternoon after a very long lunch.
• The pacing is frantic, but the energy is mostly just confused sweating.

If you watch this back-to-back with something like The Vortex, the contrast in tone is genuinely jarring. One is trying to be a drama, and this? This is just two guys trying to avoid getting yelled at by their wives. It's not high art. It's not even medium art. It's just a thing that exists on film.

I’m still not sure if they actually got the place clean. The movie ends so abruptly that I think they just gave up, which is honestly the most relatable part of the whole experience. 🧼