Saw it on TV yesterday or the day before. I found it a passable time waster with the usual ingredients:

1. Whatever number son is involved, he always wants to join his father on the case, Charlie insults him and eventually has to rescue him.

2. There is almost always a frightened black sidekick and Mantan Moreland is, in this regard, one of the successors to Step'n Fetchit.

Eddie Anderson and Willie Best played similar parts in various movies, not always Charlie's. Mildly racist and condescending.

3. Charlie always has a supply of aphorisms at the ready. No real mystery involved and not a Charlie Chan at the Opera. But

not bad, though one could write the film oneself.

** out of ****.