With a star-spangled dramatis personae including Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Moore, William Bendix, Jerry Colonna, and Robert Benchley, "It's in the Bag" sounds like a funnyman version of the Warner and MGM gargantuas, but is instead a movie version of the Texaco Star Theater, complete with Mrs. "No-o-o-o?" Noosbaum.

Instead of situations, the "Bag" relies on gags for its laughs and suffers as a result. Even the hilarious antics of Fred Allen cannot relieve the monotony of joke after joke with humorous touches few and far between.

Aside from the stars, a host of minor characters make up for some of the film's chronic dreariness. Mrs. Noosbaum, "I'm tellink mine hosband . . ." is rivalled only by John Carradine, in a ghoulish carbon copy of Ephraim Tutt sniggering while hunched over an organ keyboard and by Sidney Toler, who doffs his perennial mustache but is still Charlie Chan.

To put a little life into what could have been a plotless horror a la Abbott and Costello, the producers have added murder and mystery to provide a spine for an otherwise invertebrate cinema. When flea trainer Allen is left an inheritance of five chairs, which he sells, and then finds that one of them has a fortune tucked away inside, there begins a routine chase involving the usual fusillade of shots and usual ending . . . Fred with a fistful of greenbacks.

With a combination of a murder and gangsters for background and a fancy roster of big names in comedy for decoration, "It's in the Bag" trailing behind Fred Allen all the way, makes its audience laugh three hours but is still only a second-rate mystery-comedy. eon