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In hindsight, knowing what is to come, this first entry in the Joe McDoakes series seems relatively subdued. But it's amusing enough.
This short came about in the first place because writer-director Richard L. Bare wanted to teach his class at University of Southern California the fundamentals of making a movie. As such, it's more of an educational short with a few comedy strokes than an out-and-out comedy.
Our hero Joe tries in vain to quit smoking as various facts about the subject are batted around. The movie's first surprise is how subdued Joe is. The first three McDoakes shorts were filmed silently, with Art Gilmore's pitch-perfect narration added later. George O'Hanlon acquits himself admirably in pantomine, but it's a lot more fun to hear him talk his way through his slow burns.
The other surprise is how topical the short's humor remains. Even in 1942, some people were obviously getting the idea of how addictive nicotine is. Pity that it took a couple more decades, and several thousand lives lost, before cigarette makers even began to acknowledge the harm they were doing. But this short satirizes the different "smoking" types pretty efficiently.
Again, the short is hardly painful to watch, but it's more funny/cute than funny/ha-ha. Joe's big adventures were yet to come.
Our rating: 
(C) 2012, Steve Bailey.
Go to:
The Joe McDoakes Shorts