This was the film that had the Who's on First routine and it is worth it just for that. The rest of the movie is not that bad centering on a riverboat and gambling
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - One of the Best
This is indeed one of the best pictures made by Abbott and Costello. The Naughty Nineties has a superb storyline tailor-made for Bud & Lou.If you are thinking about watching this by all means do. This one will keep you in stitches from the beginning to the very end. One of the best scenes in the movie is where the boys are in the Bad-guy's room when he is sleeping. He sleep-walks and mistakes Lou for an Indian and works him over.But Lou has revenge before he ever leaves the room!
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Abbott & Costello's best version of "Who's On First?"
The showboat "River Queen" visits the Mississippi river town of Ironville with Bud Abbott as Dexter, the lead actor, and Lou Costello as Sebastian, the chief roustabout. Despite the protests of the boys and his beautiful daughter Caroline (Lois Collier), Captain Sam (Henry Travers) allows three unscrupulous characters to come on board: the gambler Crawford (Alan Curtis), his girl friend Bontia (Rita Johnson), and their bodyguard Bailey (Joe Sawyer). The three are fleeing from the local sheriff and when they arrive in St. Louis they get Captain Sam drunk at the Gilded Cage gambling house and win controlling interest of his boat in a crooked card game. Looks like it is up to Dexter and Sebastian to save the day in typical Abbott & Costello style.
The chief charm of this film is that it includes my favorite version of Abbott & Costello's celebrated "Who's On First?" routine, which Bud wearing that St. Louis Wolves uniform. Most of the other gags in this film are retreads, such as the "Mirror Scene" made famous by the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup" (but traced back to Max Linder's 1927 film "Seven Years" if you must know), although they can still make you laugh, as when Sebastian sings "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" and mistakes Dexter's orders for raising and lowering the curtain to be instructions on what type of voice to use singing the song. But you cannot get better than "Who's on First?" The boys kept it fresh by always adding some new twist every time they performed it and because they never memorized the skit; they just tried to catch each other making a mistake. This is the version that Ken Burns used in his celebrated "Baseball" documentary. The rest of the movie is just not up to the standard set by this classic comedy routine. It is not surprising to learn that "The Naughty Nineties" was filmed on the riverboat set left over from "Showboat." This 1945 film was directed by Jean Yarbrough.