I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I loved this movie when I first saw it at a revival cinema in the 1960s, but looking at it on Grapevine Video's excellent DVD last night, I was not half as impressed. The movie is still pretty funny, but a lot of the humor is forced and Fred Allen monotonously plays his role on just the one note throughout. "So what?" you ask. "So does everyone else!" But all the other players have very small parts or even cameos, whilst Allen is on screen continuously and he actually acts as if he's on radio, pitching all his lines at a monotonous broadcast level instead of availing himself of any movie subtleties. Of the support cast, I thought Benny and Bendix gave the most enjoyable performances. Has anyone noticed there is an odd asymmetry in the major cast line- up? There are two "A" players (Allen and Ameche), no less than four "B" names (Benny, Bendix, Barnes and Benchley), two "C", (Colonna and Carradine), two "P" (Pope and Pious) and three "T" (Terry, Tyler and Toler). Add Victor Moore and Rudy Vallee -- and that's it!

Fred Allen made a living hurling brickbats and biting the hands that fed him, and one may surmise that his only starring role in a major motion picture would push the envelope. "It's in the Bag" does so, sometimes with breathtaking efficiency -- it's like a whole different world opened up in this film apart from typical 1940s screwball comedy, a negative, street smart and cynical attitude more in line with the comedic tone of later eras. But if you want to laugh, you might do better with a more typical screwball comedy of the period than with "It's in the Bag," as its episodic and composite construction as a film doesn't maintain a consistent level of hilarity, and parts of it are more confusing than funny. Fred Allen is terrific, and one wishes he'd been more interested in appearing in films, though his best work is unquestionably found in his radio programs; his deadpan mug, though, is effective in movies even though he had "a great face for radio." Binnie Barnes, Robert Benchley, John Carradine and William Bendix all stand out in this piece, and in the main "It's in the Bag" is definitely worth seeing at least once for its value as a dark, non-conformist alternative to American film comedies of the 1940s. However, it's a little too long, has too many moving parts and Fred Allen seems aware of that, stating in his ad-libbed annotation of the opening credit for producer Jack Skirball, "It's his picture."

For anyone who is considering a career as a comedian, It's In The Bag should be required viewing. For the rest of us it gives us many laughs and it's the one and only opportunity to see Fred Allen's talents on full display.Allen's brand of absurdist humor has influenced so many people right down to today. You can see traces of his influence in Rowan&Martin's Laugh-In, the Mighty Carson Art Players from the Tonight Show and even Monty Python's Flying Circus and may be most of all the work of Mel Brooks on the screen. Because the cinema of necessity a tightly controlled script is in order, one aspect of Allen you don't see was his quick wit with an ad-lib. Some even consider him faster with a quip than Groucho Marx.The premise for this film is that Fred is the financially strapped owner of a flea circus, owing everybody in town including bookie Ben Welden and barely supporting wife Binnie Barnes and children Gloria Pope and Richard Tyler. A long unheard of uncle however is murdered and the uncle left Allen a set of five chairs. Our genius of a hero sells them off before a phonograph record from his late uncle tells him that $300,000.00 is hidden in one of the chairs together with clues as to who murdered him. Of course the perpetrators are shadowing Allen's every move as he seeks to retrieve the chairs from their new owners and find his fortune in the lining. The whole thing is an excuse for several skits as Allen goes on his quest for the chairs. One of the chairs was sold to Minerva Pious who is Mrs. Nussbaum and a regular on Allen's radio show. She happened to sell the chair to one Jack Benny. Benny's character as a miser has become so ingrained in the American culture that even today people who've heard the name know that about him and can appreciate the cheap jokes. What they might not realize is that Jack Benny and Fred Allen engaged in one of the great famous radio feuds so that dimension of the scene with Fred Allen might be lost.Another couple of chairs goes to a nightclub where folks like Don Ameche, Rudy Vallee, and Victor Moore are picking up some extra money as singing waiters. Another goes to William Bendix, head of the criminal Bendix gang. Bendix is terrific burlesquing his own tough guy image and John Carradine who played many a sinister role on screen looks like he's having a ball playing a crooked lawyer.Even Jerry Colonna is in this film, on loan from Bob Hope's radio show playing a zany psychiatrist. There is so much in It's In The Bag packed into less than 90 minutes you can hardly stop for breath.This film is a rare comic treat and should never be missed when broadcast. Demand TCM acquire this film and broadcast it.

Well, actually more like an "Uncle Scrooge" adventure turned into a movie, with acerbic Fred Allen subbing for Carl Barks' peripatetic miser, running into, across and over a panoply of bizarre characters in search of (what else, Uncle Scrooge?) a lost fortune. "Bag" offers the usual Barks-type exotic locales -- there's a byzantine movie theater that seems deliberately Disney-esque -- and colorful characters, here embodied by some surprising Hollywood figures (Rudy Vallee, Don Ameche, Jerry Colonna, etc,)The inevitable encounter with jack Benny is funny enough, but my favorite cameo here was etched by John Carradine as an organ-playing arch-villain, complete with cape and top-hat. Not to be missed!