Pluskylang Great Film overall

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Bill Slocum It's quite a pairing, though not the one the producers had in mind with their title: Icons Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx, together in a get-rich-quick farce that is rather amusing despite a plot thinner than Groucho's forelock.Actually, the title "Double Dynamite" was a single entendre meant to highlight the presence of busty co-star Jane Russell. She's Mibs, a bank teller put off at her co-worker boyfriend Johnny (Sinatra) always crying poor when she wants to talk marriage. Alas, when Johnny falls into bigtime mobster money, she thinks he's stolen it from the bank. Groucho is a waiter who offers to help the lovebirds find a safe nest – across the border."You are in a barrel of rice with your mouth sewn up," says the waiter.From the Sinatra books I've read, I came to watch "Double Dynamite" with low expectations. It was made right in the middle of his commercial nadir, when he joked that only process servers wanted his autograph. "Double D" is sometimes described as the "Mama Will Bark" of his acting career, so it was a pleasant surprise for me to be so entertained by the result.Sinatra is amiably clueless as the straight-living beau, unwittingly turned into a high-stakes roller after helping out a grateful gangster who forces Johnny to accept his gratitude – or else: "What's the matter, don't you like money?" The only thing funnier than Sinatra made uncomfortable by his close proximity to gangsters is one made uncomfortable by booze and gambling, but Frank pulls off this atypical character rather well.Director Irving Cummings and his creative team invest the film with a high-spirited, anything-goes quality that helps make for a fun 80 minutes. Groucho's slumming – heck, I guess even Jane was here – but the results are pleasant and sometimes cleverly subversive, as when we meet the CEO of Johnny and Miggs' bank, a guy so important he knows nothing of what goes on there.Groucho even has fun with one of Sinatra's signature songs, when Johnny takes him to see where the gamblers hang out only to discover instead a shirt store staffed by middle-aged women. "It's witchcraft!" he cries.There are only three musical numbers in the film, the third being a reprise of "It's Only Money," which tells us "The nicest people we know/Are the people who get their faces on dough." Sinatra and Russell also duet on a number that suits both of them well, the lightly croony "Kisses And Tears." Russell plays mousy so well here it seems a shame God made her such a vixen.There is a nifty plot twist near the end of the film, and a lot of moments throughout for Groucho to show off his impeccable comic timing – "I've got a horse going in the third so fast that he'll win the second" is the kind of okay line he turns to gold. The script isn't Preston Sturges, but I laughed more here than I did watching "Sullivan's Travels."All in all, "Double Dynamite" may be a case of rewarding low expectations. I had them, and enjoyed myself. But I think it'll prove solid entertainment even if you've been warned it's pretty good.

MartinHafer I tried watching this film with my wife and oldest daughter, but after a while they get pretty nasty--insisting I turn off "that stupid film". Since I have a much higher tolerance for bad, I decided to finish watching it a few days later. Well, after slogging through the film, I could see why this film sat on the shelf for three years before it was ultimately released--it just wasn't funny and occasionally it grated on you. Truly this was a bad film--even with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx in the film.The movie begins with Sinatra walking down the street and seeing some guys beating up another guy. He intervenes and to show his appreciation, the victim tells him to "come with me". They enter an innocent enough looking place...that ends up being a front for a gambling operation. His appreciation then entailed putting $1000 on a "sure thing" horse--which won. So far, so good. But, when the gambler puts the winnings on the next two races (two more "sure things") and the money is now $60,000, Sinatra is pretty happy--even though up until then he insisted he hated gambling and just wanted to be let go back to work (it was his lunch hour). When he does go back to work eventually, he hears that the bank is missing $75,000 and he's afraid to tell anyone that he's won--lest they think his new-found wealth was stolen by him since he is a teller.After this interesting but impossible to believe beginning, the film starts to bog down. Most of this is because Sinatra and Jane Russell aren't really well cast--they aren't especially good at comedy. And, by pairing them with Groucho (who is really wild and funny), the whole mixture just doesn't work. It seems fake and very, very forced. And for the next hour, lots of kookiness occurs until finally, thankfully, the whole thing is over and everyone lives happily ever after.Overall, a huge misfire. I was almost tempted to give the film a 2, but at least Groucho is watchable in a rather obnoxious role. Dull and stupid--not a great formula for success.

bkoganbing Frank Sinatra's last role under his contract with RKO was this slight comedy Double Dynamite. It was also the last time he played a milquetoast schnook. Double Dynamite was started in 1948 but Howard Hughes in his infinite wisdom kept under under wraps for three years, not releasing it until Christmas of 1951. In a backhanded way he may have helped Sinatra because in 1951 the film offers were not coming and at least his name was kept before the public eye.Hughes could read the trade papers though and the Sinatra who had box office clout in 1948 had little in 1951. Probably Frank was going to be billed below Jane Russell in a Hughes production in any event, but he was third billed below Groucho Marx in this one.If this had been done at Paramount you would have seen Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton in the roles Sinatra and Russell have. They're both bank tellers at Howard Freeman's bank, but Freeman's in retirement and it's run by his playboy son Don McGuire and manager Harry Hayden.Frank and Jane make $42.50 a week, not a princely sum even back in 1951 and poor Frank goes and asks for a raise from Hayden. Personally I thought it was his best moment in the film. The way Hayden just jawbones him out of the raise reminded me of Branch Rickey negotiating salaries with baseball players. Right around the time this film was being made, there was a campaign against Rickey being orchestrated by New York Daily News sports columnist Jimmy Powers. One of the tags Powers hung on Rickey was El Cheapo. Based on the stories that Powers and others told about Rickey beating down every dollar a player might ask for, I have no doubt Rickey was the model for Hayden's character.Anyway Frank lucks into a windfall when he saves a notorious bookmaker, Nestor Paiva, from a beating being dished out by a rival mob. In gratitude Paiva 'lends' Frankie a thousand dollars and he bets on several 'sure things' with Paiva and he walks away with $60,000.00.But as Frank returns triumphantly from Paiva's betting parlor, he discovers Hayden making a speech to the staff about someone embezzling a lot of money. Not even Russell believes him. His only ally is their good friend, a waiter at a one arm spaghetti joint, Groucho Marx.At this point Groucho really takes over the film. He gives Sinatra and Russell all kinds of advice, romantic and financial, about how to deal with this perplexing situation. One of them being put all the money in his name. They do that and Groucho does live it up in grand style.Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn wrote two of their most forgettable songs. With the release held up for three years, Sinatra never even bothered to record them for Columbia Records where he was at the time. Kisses and Tears is a duet with Jane Russell and there's a comedy patter number, It's Only Money for Groucho and Frank. Sinatra was usually given some great songs by Styne and Cahn in the forties, but they definitely failed him here. If it wasn't for Groucho Marx, Double Dynamite might very well be several notches lower in my estimation. When he's not on the screen you just wait for him to come back. I have a funny feeling that Groucho stole the film from Jane Russell who Hughes was trying to build up and that that was the reason it was held up for three years.I marvel that Jane Russell had any career at all considering Howard Hughes's obsession with her two weapons of mass destruction. Double Dynamite is the third film that I know of that he held for years before releasing that starred her, The Outlaw and the noir classic His Kind of Woman were the other two. Good thing she did The Paleface with Bob Hope over at Paramount and out of his reach.Besides those mentioned look for a nice performance by William Edmunds as Groucho's suffering employer, Mr. Baganucci. And Don McGuire is really quite the wolf in wolf's clothing as he keeps sexually harassing Jane.It's not a great film, it might have been better had it been in the hands of someone like Preston Sturges at Paramount.

mkilmer This move is set some time in the 1940s, so plug that in and go along for the ride. Sinatra stars as an honest man, eking out a living as a bank teller but not enough for marriage. By chance, he's captured by the underworld and makes a mint. He can marry Jane Russell, something the wisecracking waiter, Groucho Marx, seems to want. But there has been an apparent embezzlement at the bank where Sinatra works, and its discovery is timed exactly with Sinatra's underworld winnings. He did not embezzle the money, but he can't rightly say he did come by it. But Groucho is there to help him, and we all know what that means.This is a nifty film with a few good twists and its share of laughs.There is a scene where "Johnny Dalton" is lying in his bed in his apartment and Mibs Goodhue in her bed in hers, separated by wall. Dalton starts to sing."You know," I teased to my wife, "that guy sounds a lot like Sinatra." "It is," she deadpanned in reply."Looks too young to be Sinatra." Yeah, 't was 1951. If you want to go back for a spell, this one will take you there.