The audience is asleep because this was never made as a picture. It is stiff and static and holds no interest outside of W. C Fields -- you don’t care what happens to anybody else, you don’t care what the outcome; you forget immediately if there was any.

This 1940 film seems to spring straight from his cranky, beleaguered, convoluted personality, with no concessions made to film form, audience enjoyment, or common sense, and still it's very funny in a desultory, strangely private kind of way.

For anyone who simply likes to laugh at the reckless manities of an inspired buffoon, we recommend The Bank Dick. It's great fun.

There's a hilarious sense of nonchalance about the whole thing, and if Fields and Cline are just throwing everything they've got at this thing and seeing what works as the film is unfolding.