GONE TO THE DOGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 15, 6 October 1939, Page 36

GONE TO THE DOGS

(Cinesound) At one. time in the history of films, the possibility of. Australian studios producing a good picture seemed as remote as building a bridge between that country and this. We still haven’t got a bridge across the Tasman, but now we do occasionally get an Australian’ film that is bright entertainment. The. main difficulties in Australia seem tobe securing good actors and overcoming technical faults. "Gone to the Dogs" is a much better film technically than many of its predecessors, but the acting still has raw edges. The handsome young men and women in the story’ don’t seem to have developed their acting abilities beyond a kind of perpetual. I gaze-into-your-soft-brown-eyes-while-you-gaze-into-mine stance.

Still, that is not so important as it might be, because this is George Wallace’s film. Maybe, like me, you're a bit tired of sophisticated cemedy, and would like a bout of pie-throwing. Then George is your man. He and a hefty friend -bounce: so merrily--through : the. picture that you may get hiccups superimposing one guffaw on another. Georgé has always been a favourite on the stage in this’ country, and here he is right up to form, if a trifle less Rabelaisian than in his flesh-and-blood appearances. George is a keeper at a zoo; and nobody could be quite as funny as he is in the gorilla’s den, or coyly mumuring, "I’m afraid I’ve got to go now, the emu’s having an egg." George as a zookeeper, George making amorous advances, George in a haunted house, and George as just George are all good enough reasons for seeing " Gone to the Dogs." That is, if you like George Wallace.