Hook, Line And Sinker 1930 Written by Ralph Spence and Tim Whelan, directed by Edward F Cline and his assistant Frederick Fleck.
Bert Wheeler, Dorothy Lee and Robert Woolsey are back together again. The guys are insurance salesmen, they help Dorothy open up a run-down hotel she's inherited. Dorothy has a thing for Bert but her mother wants her to marry a well off lawyer. Robert makes a play for Dorothy's mom with some positive interest returned. The trio open the hotel and cater to the well off. That attracts a nice selection of rich people who need to store their jewels in the big safe at the front desk. That swag attracts some crooks, in the form of a couple of rival mobs, who take up residence in the hotel. There's plenty of noise and running about. It eventually culminates in a big shoot out in the lobby.
I enjoyed it, I'm generally liking the W&W movies after they move away from the musical format. The big dance numbers are mostly fine in the early films but I just don't care that much about the songs. You can see a fuzzy copy on YouTube, see link above. The movie has fallen into the public domain and a lot of the cheap copies that come on DVD or found on the Internet are mostly piss poor. The Warner Archive copies of the films are pretty clean and fairly sharp. They are worth spending the money on, unless you don't care for the comedy style of Wheeler and Woolsey.
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