Man's Angle, The (1942)
** (out of 4)
At the end of Robert Benchley's THE TROUBLE WITH HUSBANDS he promises that he'll take a look at the other side and that's exactly what this short does. Benchley, once again at his desk, tells how Mr. Doakes (Benchley) is annoyed by certain things his wife does. Examples include her messing up his Sunday newspaper, her going hat shopping with him and how she asks him to tell a joke only to keep cutting him off with her version of it. By watching this Paramount short I'm guessing the filmmakers felt that mostly women would be watching it because there are at least three different times when Benchley tells people that they're not meaning all women, just a select number. It seems like before every joke we have to hear a warning on how this isn't meant to imply to all women. When the men are taking the beating you never see these warning but if it seems like I'm going on about something that's not important then you're wrong. This is actually important because it effects the jokes being told because it seems as if they didn't want to spoof women too much so instead they just took simple things and made them a lot more annoying than any woman would probably act. Just take a look at the way the wife handles the newspaper as an example. We're made to believe that a wife takes pride in a clean home yet she does this to the newspaper? The scene with the joke isn't any funnier because of how overboard they go with it.