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One of my all time favorites.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Abbott & Costello play Flash Fulton & Tubby McCoy, two newspaper photographers who are mistaken for hit men by a trio of gangsters(played by Sheldon Leonard, Marc Lawrence, & Joe Sawyer) who plan to rob a bank while have an alibi of being in the hospital. The boys become prime suspects for the crime, so flee to a ski lodge where they meet old friend Johnny Long and his orchestra, along with singer Ginny Simms, who get them jobs, while they dodge the gangsters and clear their names. Patrick Knowles & Elyse Knox play the doctor and nurse fooled into helping the "sick" gang leader. Very funny comedy with pleasant setting, good cast and songs. Quite underrated comedy with the team.

I would like these sorts of movies a lot better if they didn't have the musical scenes. I watch these movies strictly to laugh. Certainly plenty of scenes made me laugh (namely the snowball scene). One can imagine being a fairly intelligent guy like Abbott's character always having to deal with a brainless sap like Costello's character and how annoying it would be.So, even though the singing drags the movie down, I recommend it overall. Pretty entertaining.Tied up for a while indeed...PS: Sheldon Leonard, who played Silky, later produced "The Danny Thomas Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show". He also provided his voice to Robert McKimson's cartoons "Kiddin' the Kitten" and "A Peck o' Trouble" as a lazy cat who tries to make a kitten do his work.

Enjoyable-enough Abbott and Costello romp where they start out as two average photographers, only to get mixed up with a group of bank robbers lead by Sheldon Leonard. The crooks mistake Bud and Lou (called Flash and Tubby here) for hired hit men when they talk of "how many people they've shot". This leads to the boys becoming nailed for a robbery, and they have to get away to the snowy Alps while trying to expose the real bad guys and prove their innocence. Nothing original, but Abbott and Costello have a few good comic routines to keep you laughing. Among the high points are: Bud constantly telling Lou to "Pack!" and then "Unpack!" when he can't make up his mind if they should get out of town or not. Also featured is the "Alright!" bit where Lou tries to impress glamor gal Ginny Simms by "playing the piano" for her while Bud hides in the background with a record player, waiting for his friend's cue. Speaking of Miss Simms, she's rather a detriment to these proceedings at times, often bursting into singing which slows things to a snail-like pace. And what's more, her songs aren't very good. **1/2 out of ****

Almost lost in Abbott & Costello's prodigious output of the early forties is a funny little movie called 'Hit The Ice.' It's easy to see why it's been overlooked; in one two-year period, 1941-42, the team came out with EIGHT new films. After that, they slowed down to a more reasonable pace of two to three movies a year. And while 'Hit The Ice' isn't as well-known as the earlier 'Buck Privates' or the later classic, 'Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein,' it shows the duo still at a peak of humor and popularity, operating like a well-oiled machine, turning out hit comedy after hit comedy. If there was a problem, it was the obvious strain on the comedians and their writers to come up with enough new funny material to sustain such a production schedule. This is why A&C films almost inevitably feel 'padded,' with too much attention paid to either a pair of young lovers or musical numbers. In 'Hit The Ice,' it's definitely the latter. The big band singer Ginny Simms has way too much screen time, singing five songs (or maybe six; forgive me for not counting), which is all the more unforgivable as none of them are memorable and a couple are stupid beyond belief. There is one sung at an ice-skating rink called 'The Slap-Happy Polka,' during which the women skating periodically slap their partners. And no, unfortunately it does not evoke a Monty Pythonesque sense of humor. Abbott & Costello though have a number of funny scenes and the film starts off with a couple of the best. Playing photographers who hope to prove their worth to the local newspaper, they stumble upon a crook playing sick in a hospital (Sheldon Leonard) and his two thugs, who mistake them for a pair of hit men from Detroit. There is a hilarious exchange of dialogue between the bad guys and A&C, built entirely around double entendres. A short time later, Bud and Lou are accused of robbing a bank and so consider leaving town. While Abbott delivers a long monologue where he agonizes between leaving and staying, so Costello alternately packs and unpacks a suitcase, another great example of the team's expertise at physical comedy and timing. The rest of the film takes place at a ski resort; A&C's hopes of clearing themselves depend on them proving the crooks from the hospital guilty. This leads to another funny scene in a log cabin where Bud and Lou try to bluff the bad guys (as only they can). A climactic ski chase down the slopes suffers from too much rear-screen projection and obvious stunt work and is typical of comedies at the time, not just Abbott & Costello's. Then we get yet ANOTHER song from Ms. Simms before the not-so-happy (for Lou anyway) ending. 'Hit The Ice' is very much worth seeing, and one of the nice things about it is that the boys' routines are not as familiar as from some of their better-known pictures. I know for me, it was almost like watching a 'new' Abbott & Costello film. And you can always fast-forward through those godawful songs.