YOU NEVER CAN TELL (1951)
Article #633 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-8-2002
Posting date: 5-3-2003

A dog inherits a fortune, and then is poisoned. He comes back from the dead as a private detective in order to solve his own murder.

There’s something about the above description that sets warning lights off in my head telling me that this could end up being insufferably cute or insufferably stupid. Actually, it ends up as neither, and part of the reason is that the private detective and his assistant (who used to be a horse) at least behave with a certain realization that they will call too much attention to themselves if they behave overly much like the animals they are; when the detective gets into a cab at one point, I was afraid we were going to have a shot of him sticking his head out the window with his tongue flapping in the wind. Instead, it’s just this kind of slapstick overkill the movie avoids. Make no mistake; the movie does depend on the central premise for a lot of its gag (the detective eats kibble, and the assistant likes to go the races), but it does so with a touch of wry wit rather than with a bludgeon. It’s a good thing it handles itself with a light touch; the story itself is pretty weak, with an ending that relies overly on coincidence rather than any sort of logic. Nonetheless, this is one of those movies that, though it is no classic by any means, is a lot better than it could have been. Dick Powell is the detective. It was remade in reverse years later by with Chevy Chase. Incidentally, the movie features a sequence in a world of the afterlife called “Beastatory” that is easily the bizarrest scene in the movie.