One Night in the Tropics (1940)

A&C's first screen appearance, 18 September 2017

Like a lot of 1930s-era romantic comedies, One Night in the Tropics has a central plot gimmick it employs in an attempt to differentiate it from the plethora of similar fare. Here, the plot device is something called "love insurance". In this case, Steve Harper (Robert Cummings) buys a policy from Jim "Lucky" Moore (Allan Jones) to insure he will marry Cynthia (Nancy Kelly) or collect on the policy. Problem is that Steve is really in love with another woman, Mickey Fitzgerald (Peggy Moran), and Cynthia falls for Lucky shortly after meeting him. That's the basic set-up – so let the comedy begin!

One Night in the Tropics will forever be remembered as Abbott and Costello's introduction to American movie screens. They've got a few funny bits (I particularly like the $1 a Day gag), but they aren't the central figures in the film Instead, A&C play second fiddle to the rather predictable melodrama I've briefly described above. It's all harmless enough entertainment, but it's really not that clever and never funny enough on its own to be much more than mediocre. No real attempt is made to incorporate A&C into the script. Their routines, regardless of how good they might be, never fit into the rest of the movie. It's 15 minutes of movie followed by 5 minutes of A&C. This pattern is repeated throughout. Another real negative for me is the singing. One song by Allan Jones is one song too many. And he has something like four or five numbers in the film. I couldn't have taken much more.

To summarize, One Night in the Tropics is harmless enough, but not great. A&C have some funny bits, but it's not an A&C movie. And, though I'm sure he has a good voice, Allan Jones sings far too much for my liking. I'll give this one a very average 5/10.

5/10