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But the parts of Writer-Director Sturges' fourth picture are better than its whole; it is a confusing mixture of satire, slapstick, drama, melodrama, comedy. Even so, it has many novel, hilarious moments.
Sturges' whipping boy is one John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), director of such comic hits as So Long Sarong, Hey, Hey in the Hayloft, etc., who unexpectedly rebels, wants to make a sociological epic named Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Sullivan, outfitted as a tramp, goes on the bum to find out about life. His bosses, who came from that side of life, know all about it and want no reminders, have him tailed by a busload of studio publicists—just in case.
The spoon-fed director meets Veronica (I Wanted Wings) Lake (called simply The Girl), an out-of-work chorine headed for home & mother. They team up. The Girl annoys Sullivan by praising his comedies, by condemning sociological epics ("There's nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive you out in the open").
Sullivan eventually tastes life. Home again from a social worker's tour of hobo jungles with The Girl, he is unexpectedly robbed, stuffed into a freight car headed south, railroaded into a prison chain gang, and officially pronounced dead. In prison he learns the value of making people laugh, returns to Hollywood a sadder & wiser director (especially after a punishing sojourn in the prison sweatbox).
Some of Sturges' slapstick sequences (a Keystone cops' auto chase; no less than four people shoved into the swimming pool) are a waste of film and satire. But many another is classic cinema—especially the scene of a Negro pastor cautioning his flock against showing their superiority over the convicts who are coming to share the parishioners' Sunday night Mickey Mouse movie.