How to Raise a Baby (1938)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Robert Benchley returns for another in his "How to..." series with this one looking at how a father should raise his son. We see how a father should take responsibility and not leave everything up to his wife and that includes getting up in the morning and giving the kid a bath. We also learn how important it is to make sure you don't eat all of the kids food. I've always said that Benchley is a tad bit hit and miss but this one here falls somewhere in the middle. It's not a complete success but if you have eight minutes to kill then you'll find yourself entertained. I watched this short two weeks after my own kid was born so I think this gave me a few more chuckles than it would have gotten otherwise. The movie features a pretty good laugh when daddy is trying to get the kid to eat and another nice scene where both mom and dad pretend to be asleep so that the other will get up in the morning. A few of the films in this series has Benchley talking to the viewer while all the action is going on but here he does the narration and keeps the movie itself silent. I think this here works a lot better than when he's on the screen and directly talking to us while dealing with everything as the "actor".