Joy Ride (1929) User Reviews

Joe Phillips....one annoying guy!

[planktonrules · 13 August 2018]

Apparently, the Vaudeville sketch "Joyriding" was made famous by George LeMaire and he performs it with Joe Phillips and later they're joined by two singing ladies.

The short was filmed in some studio and the street scene background is apparently painted. George and Joe are waiting with their car for a couple ladies. When they arrive, Joe inexplicably behaves like a lowlife--yelling woo-woo, assaulting the women and being a total jerk. None of this is funny. Then, the ladies sing a brief number....after which, Joe becomes mean and nasty once again....none of which was very funny. Overall, proof that not everything old is good!

The Straight Man Gets Top Billing

[boblipton · 6/10 · 16 April 2016]

Two men drive up in a flivver and try to pick up a couple of girls in this early Pathe short derived from a burlesque routine.

Observing the interaction of George LeMaire and Joe Phillips, you can see the same sort of relationship that Abbott and Costello brought to their roles. Joe is the comic; he suggests dragging the girls under a bridge and takes wild, childish swings at everyone. LeMaire is the nominally more sophisticated individual, who tells Joe he can't do that. There are puns: Esther Dale -- later a Paramount regular and one of Preston Sturges stock company -- is named Miss Studebaker, which Joe mistakes for other automotive names. There's a brief musical interlude when the girls perform and the whole thing ends when they walk off. It's too rude for vaudeville, which catered to the family trade, but it's cleaned up from the raucous level of the burlesque stage.

Like many another early sound short, it's little more than the record of an act that must have played many times on the stage. It's well done and as the memory of a vanished era, particularly interesting.