Speak Easily

Rating:
Summary: Keaton's Best MGM Talkie
Review: Despite his personal troubles during the early 1930s, Buster Keaton reveals another dimension of his comic talent in "Speak Easily." He gives a splendid performance as Timolean Zanders Post, an isolated professor who believes he has inherited $750,000. With this mistaken financial security, he manages a struggling vaudeville troupe that he takes to Broadway. "Speak Easily" was the second MGM film to pair Keaton with Jimmy Durante. Though an unusual combination, they work remarkably well together in this enjoyable musical-comedy -- one of the few movies that displays Keaton's flair for verbal humor. The result is the best of Keaton's MGM talkies. However, his finest sound feature would be made in France: the excellent and rarely seen "Le Roi des Champs-Elysees (The King of the Champs-Elysees)," released in 1934 after Keaton was fired by MGM. The French certainly had a better appreciation of Buster's talents than MGM. Nevertheless, "Speak Easily" proves that Keaton could make a memorable comedy within the constraints of the studio system.

Rating:
Summary: Speak Easily
Review: SPEAK EASILY is very sad. I've read several times where this is one of Buster's best (if not the best) talkies he made. I don't care for it at all. I have it only becuase I am a Buster fan. It reminds me of most of Laurel & Hardy's movies after they left Roach. The Buster in Speak Easily is a shadow of the Buster character in his silents. Jimmy Durante is overbearing and unfunny. MGM should be ashamed of themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Buster In Decline
Review: The second half of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" picks up a bit with some fine slapstick from Buster involving a slippery marble floor, but the first half is a total waste. Unless, that is, you find some historical interest in the views of the Keaton mansion. But, how stupid could MGM be? THIS stupid: they had here one of the greatest physical comedians of all time, and they kept flat on his back in bed for almost half the picture! Pathetic... no wonder Buster started drinking.

"Speak Easily" is even worse. The Keaton/Durante "partnership" was a marriage made in Hell (again, by MGM). There's no chemistry whatsoever between the two, and Buster often looks pained in his role as the professor. His timing is starting to go downhill, too, probably the result of his increasing alcohol problem. Add to that the sloppy direction, the cheesy production (it sounds like MGM spent more money on the snappy theme music than on the rest of the film), the third-rate script, and you've got a real prize turkey. NOT recommended, except to masochists.