Owned release: Included as part of the Complete Universal Pictures set released by Universal in 2008 (the one in the big stupid box that looks like a steamer trunk and has a top-open lid on which the hinges split at the slightest provocation, not the currently available version released later that replaced the box with a slipcover). This film is on Disc 13 (of 15).
Acquired: February of 2015 from Amazon.
Seen before?: Once from this disc - June 13, 2017.
It's an interesting thing doing this alphabetically - there are certain things I know I'm going to have to skip around on (I recently watched Ginger knowing I'll be tackling The Abductors within the next week or two, and I wouldn't dream of watching Aparajito before watching Pather Panchali), but other films I feel all right taking out of order. Like, for instance, this Abbott & Costello box set. Going alphabetically means I'll be dealing with the later films, generally considered their weakest work, before getting to the stuff that made them big. While there's no issues of continuity between these films, obviously, there is part of me that wonders if I'm not more affectionate towards the films I've seen from them so far because of that lack of historical perspective - since I haven't seen the earlier films, I can't tell what's been reused, which routines are old hat, which gags have had better (or, to be fair, worse) effect elsewhere... essentially, I'm coming to these films sans context. The booklet that comes with the box set notes when certain famous routines are used in certain films, and Mars does have one specific routine - "Venusian Balloons" - that is a rewrite of an earlier bit, "Tree of Truth," that cropped up in 1942's Pardon My Sarong. Would I find the rendition of the bit here less amusing if I was familiar with the earlier iteration? (It's isn't that sharp anyway, so maybe it's a moot point.)
The interesting thing in that regard is that A&C clearly know that, since they'd been grinding out these films for over a decade (and for years before that as a stage & radio team), and as such the overelaborate plot makes room for two escaped convicts whose main purpose is to facilitate a mistaken identity switch on the boys when the convicts rob a bank. The joke, of course, is that these two have the same look and dynamic as the leads, right down to the big dopey one using the catchphrase, "I am with you." Though the best setpiece is the delightful slow-motion sequence in space, the New Orleans segment, where A&C mistakenly believe themselves to be on Mars, is on the whole the funniest section of this extremely episodic film, offering gags both silly (the convicts using a ray gun to freeze bank employees, including one guy in the middle of drinking from a water fountain) and surreal ("I broke the girl in half!"). It kinda falls flat once they get to Venus (not Mars - truth in advertising took a sleep here) and deal with the all-female, all-swimsuit model society that lives there, but even the weakest material is well-sold by the leads, as smooth and professional a comedy team as any that ever worked. Their chemistry and easy rapport wrings laughs from even the dumbest wordplay ("What makes a balloon go up?" "Hot air." "Then what's keepin' you down?") and Costello's reactions in particular create extra punchlines that kill even when the scripted ones fall flat. (When Costello spots one of the convicts for the first time, seeing him only from behind in his prison stripes, the laugh doesn't come when he describes him as "a zebra without any tail" - it's a bit earlier when he emits this two-stage gulped shriek that sounds like he's trying to scream inward down his own throat.) They made funnier films - I've seen some of them already - but there's value in seeing the wonders great comedians can do with middling material. So am I laughing at this stuff because I don't know exactly how second-hand it is, or am I laughing just because Abbott and Costello were funny guys and if they do reuse material, there's not much difference between that and a rewatch of a favorite comedy?
Note of interest #1: In a film so wrapped in flight and space travel, it's a knowing gag that has the first shot of the film be a toy glider in the air being piloted by Costello's character. Whose name is Orville.
Note of interest #2: A laugh that exists now in a way it wouldn't have before - when Costello asks the queen of Venus about the possibility of getting a nice juicy steak, she explains that they have food pills instead, then pauses a beat and says, "We have pills for everything." I imagine the innuendo was intended even back in 1953, but post-Viagra, there's an extra edge there. Especially since that society hadn't seen a man in 400 years.
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