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SO YOU WANT TO BE ON THE RADIO

This is a topical McDoakes short subject if ever there was one, satirizing the radio quiz programs of the day. Needless to say, much of the short's satirical value has wasted away.

Joe and his wife Alice participate on a radio show titled "Aren't People Ridiculous?" Joe has to put his head through a hole in a wall that's like a bull's-eye target, and if Alice doesn't answer her given questions correctly, Joe gets all sorts of humiliating things done to him in front of a studio audience. Guess how many answers Alice gets right.

But they get a boatload of prizes for their trouble -- including a live woman in a bikini, to which Alice nonchalantly responds (in the movie's best gag), "That thing'll have to go back" -- and you'd think they'd be happy enough with that. But one of the prizes turns out to be a pair of tickets to another game show, and off Joe goes to humiliate himself some more.

Before the movie (mercifully) ends, they manage to squeeze Joe into yet a third quiz show, long after we've gotten the joke and Joe hasn't. About the only thing this short proves is that "reality TV" isn't that far removed of a genre from late-era radio.

* (This short got the Oscar nomination instead of So You Want to Be a Detective?? Go figure!)

Our rating:

(C) 2012, Steve Bailey.

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