Where has this wonderfully funny movie been hiding all these years? And why? It's long been on my short list of films I wish would show up on home video, along with Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety" and Altman's "A Perfect Couple" and "A Wedding". Though most of what Allan Dwan directed before and after WWII was more or less serious, he made nothing but a dozen or so comedies/musicals from 1940 through 1945. And this may have been the best of them, certainly vastly superior to the 1985 Richard Pryor remake. The all-but-forgotten Dennis O'Keefe starred in the last several, including 2 that can still be found on VHS -- "Up in Mabel's Room" and "Getting Gertie's Garter". These may have constituted the last flowering of the screwball comedy genre that had produced so many hilarious films since the mid-30s. To be fair, "My Friend Irma", which introduced Martin & Lewis just a few years later, was probably the very last really worthy film of the genre. These Dwan/O'Keefe gems were not so much the Three Stooges/Marx Bros./Lucy breathless kind of silly as they were softer slapstick fare. In fact, they were the precursor of some of the earliest and funniest TV sitcoms -- Marie Wilson as "My Friend Irma", Elena Verdugo in "Meet Millie", Joan Davis in "I Married Joan" and Eve Arden as "Our Miss Brooks" -- all of which debuted in 1952. Granted, "Brewster's Millions" is by no means a great film, but it's typical of a kind of good light-hearted entertainment that many might enjoy today if given the chance.
