Elliott Nugent

(On TV, January 2021) There are movies that sound far better on paper than on the screen, and My Favorite Brunette is certainly one of them. It’s a fairly rare example of a contemporary film noir parody—Bob Hope plays a baby photographer who’s mistaken for a private detective and thus dragged in a convoluted mystery plot with a number of actors (such as Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr.) spoofing their screen personas along the way. In theory, it wounds wonderful. In execution, it’s underwhelming: While Hope quips away shamelessly and the rest of the cast is certainly aware of the joke, the comedy of the film feels low-key and low-energy. The satire seems less ferocious than it could have been, and director Elliott Nugent’s work feels curiously unmemorable. This being said, I may revisit this one later on—I suspect that I may not have been in the ideal frame of mind for a fluffy comedy, and my reaction to My Favorite Brunette feels like one that could be unusually sensitive to mood.