Tay Garnett directs an engaging episode of the Roach Studio's SCREEN DIRECTOR'S PLAYHOUSE anthology series about a very English professor of English who comes across a way of miniaturizing anything: cars, artillery pieces, ready to be restored to full size later. Michael Wilding as the professor plays it relatively straight, surrounded by a company of increasingly daffy military and lunatic asylum types. Donald MacBride loses his temper engagingly, as he had been doing for decades and the stuffy bureaucracies of modern society -- as of the 1950s, anyway -- are pleasantly satirized. It's not a belly-laughing sort of comedy, but well worth your time.
2 Reviews
A Comedy Without the Laughs
Michael_Elliott9 January 2012
Screen Directors Playhouse: The Carroll Formula (1956)
** (out of 4)
Weak comedy has David Scott (Michael Wilding) finding a formula that will allow him to shrink anything in the world and then return it to normal size. When we meet David he is locked up in an asylum and we then flashback to how this crazy thing all got started. THE CARROLL FORMULA almost feels like a failed TV pilot that never sold so the Hal Roach Studio just bought it and sold it as an episode of Screen Directors Playhouse. There's certainly nothing awful here but there's nothing good either so the viewer is basically left with a lifeless film that sucks away 24-minutes. I think the biggest problem was the actual screenplay because it gives you a decent idea but then it never does anything with it. I'm guessing this was meant to be a comedy but you'd have a hard time figuring that out because there's simply not anything funny going on here. Wilding plays the part rather straight with the exception of a couple minutes and I thought he just wasn't very good in the part. Havis Davenport plays his girlfriend and she clearly steals the film but it's too bad that she's not in much of it. I will say that the special effects were better than I was expecting and this is mainly on the scenes where an item starts off small before turning large. The effects are certainly obvious to figure out but they will still quite good.
** (out of 4)
Weak comedy has David Scott (Michael Wilding) finding a formula that will allow him to shrink anything in the world and then return it to normal size. When we meet David he is locked up in an asylum and we then flashback to how this crazy thing all got started. THE CARROLL FORMULA almost feels like a failed TV pilot that never sold so the Hal Roach Studio just bought it and sold it as an episode of Screen Directors Playhouse. There's certainly nothing awful here but there's nothing good either so the viewer is basically left with a lifeless film that sucks away 24-minutes. I think the biggest problem was the actual screenplay because it gives you a decent idea but then it never does anything with it. I'm guessing this was meant to be a comedy but you'd have a hard time figuring that out because there's simply not anything funny going on here. Wilding plays the part rather straight with the exception of a couple minutes and I thought he just wasn't very good in the part. Havis Davenport plays his girlfriend and she clearly steals the film but it's too bad that she's not in much of it. I will say that the special effects were better than I was expecting and this is mainly on the scenes where an item starts off small before turning large. The effects are certainly obvious to figure out but they will still quite good.
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