Every year, United States National Film Preservation Board selects up to 25 films of cultural, historical and aesthetic significance, which will be preserved by being included in the National Film Registry. This one was chosen in 1992 and it's considered to be one of the best comedies ever. I really have to ask - why? Although it lasts just a bit over an hour it successfully bored me so much that I fell asleep sitting at the table. In my opinion, the only thing worth seeing in this movie is hilarious, and for its time excellently shot, car chase scene. I do not recommend.5/10

I found this film, also known as The Bank Detective, listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I recognised the name of the leading legendary comedy actor, so I was looking forward to what it had to offer, directed by Edward F. Cline, who worked with Buster Keaton many times. Basically Egbert Sousé (W.C. Fields) is a hard-drinking family man, he spends a lot of time drinking, smoking and taking money from his young daughter's piggy bank, replacing it with I.O.U.s. Due to this, Sousé's relationships with his wife Agatha (Cora Witherspoon) and mother-in-law have become strained, and he cannot help but make a crack about the name Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton), fiancé of his older daughter. Sousé sets off for the day, and comes across a movie shoot, he talks his way into a temporary job, replacing the drunken director who does not show up. While on his lunch break, Sousé unknowingly thwarts an attempted bank robbery, one of the two men escapes, but Sousé is praised by the town as a hero, the grateful bank president gives him a job as a bank detective. Sousé convinces Og, who works at the bank, to steal 500 dollars to invest in a questionable mining company, Og hopes to return the money in four days, when he will get his annual bonus. But bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) plans an audit, Sousé tries to do something to stop this, but Snoopington is still determined to proceed with the audit. As Snoopington is about to discover the missing funds, the questionable mining company has actually struck it rich, Sousé and Og are now wealthy and don't have to worry about Snoopington. However, the escaped bank robber returns, with a new comrade, he robs the bank for a second time, and escapes with Sousé as a hostage, the robbers force him to drive their getaway car in a spectacular chase, during which the car slowly falls apart. In the end Sousé thwarts the second attempted robbery, and is rewarded again by the bank, now that they are rich, Sousé's family treat with more respect. Also starring Una Merkel as Myrtle Sousé, Evelyn Del Rio as Elsie Mae Adele Brunch Sousé, Jessie Ralph as Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch, Shemp Howard as Joe Guelpe, Richard 'Dick' Purcell as Mackley Q. Greene, Russell Hicks as J. Frothingham Waterbury and Pierre Watkin as Mr. Skinner. Fields became popular for his comic persona as a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, he is certainly likable despite growling and grumbling a lot of the time, there were the odd bits of business related stuff I didn't get, but it is a simple story, with good slapstick jokes, and the final car chase is the highlight, all in all a worthwhile classic comedy. Good!

Although not as funny as the same team's "Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941) – even though it re-uses some of the same gags including the much-reprinted car chase finale – there's still plenty of typical Fields' humor in this entry. True, the plot does take up some precious screen time that could have been better used for comedy and Franklin Pangborn's study of J. Pinkerton Snoopington seems to run forever (although it does conclude with a marvelous gag which almost – I stress almost – makes up for all the tedium and marking time that has gone before. The rest of the support players are first class – particularly Russell Hicks and Grady Sutton. And music director. Charles Previn has provided a first-class score. In all, a very entertaining 74 minutes!

Happy to say I found this film a lot more amusing than "It's A Gift", reputed to be W.C. Fields' funniest. Made six years later than the earlier film, it's as if Fields realized that the repetitive nature of the bits in 'Gift' tended to wear the viewer out, whereas he presented each of his humorous situations here just once and moved the viewer on to the next. Yet at the same time he recycled some of the ideas from the 1934 flick, like the pronunciation of his last name (accent grave over the e, Souse/Bissonette), the irritable wife and a willingness to beat his kid to prove how much he loved him or her. I don't know if these themes were staples of his pictures because I haven't seen enough of them, so I guess I'll find out in due course.If you stay attentive to the opening credits you'll see one for Screenplay by Mahatma Kane Jeeves. Watching this film on Turner Classics and hosted by moderator Ben Mankiewicz, the origin of the name was explained by Fields' granddaughter, Dr. Harriet Fields. It was derived from one of Fields' sayings when he was getting ready to perform. He would ask for 'My hat, my cane and my shoes'. So a clever play on words, and as a word-smith, Fields sprinkles his story liberally with uncommon words like moon calf and jabbernowl. But he really caught my attention with a line that Hitchcock wound up using in his 1945 picture "Spellbound" when Ingrid Bergman says to Gregory Peck - "Professor, you're suffering from mogo on the go-go". However the phrase used here was 'mogo on the ga-go-go'.Anyway, I found the picture to be highly entertaining, and even a bit risqué at times, Fields' caricature of being a souse notwithstanding. Every time the Black Pussy Cat Café came into view I had to wonder what was on Fields' mind, other than ordering up a depth bomb to wet his whistle. Similarly I would never had considered his proboscis to be an 'adsatitious excrescious', and by that time I thought he might have been making it all up as he went.Above all, make sure you stick around for the well choreographed car chase near the end of the film. It reminded me a lot of the painstaking choreography Chaplin put into some of his pictures. The ditch diggers in particular stayed right on cue for their bit, and the near misses with the dueling road cars was epic timing at it's best. Something you take for granted today but back in the Forties I imagine it was quite the feat. With all that, one's best take away from the picture might well be the advice Egbert Souse offered his soon to be son-in-law on preparing for the future, even if it was offered in convoluted Fieldsian double talk - 'Don't wait too long in life'.