Plot
Mild mannered young CPA Bill Denny forgets about his and his wife Kate's second anniversary until the last minute, when a small dog starts to follow him. After Kate mistakes the dog for her present, mayhem ensues, and Bill is chased by police, smugglers, counterfeiters and murderers while being harassed by his mother-in-law.
Since Archie insists on sleeping in their bed, Bill and Kate's ability to "celebrate" their wedding anniversary is indefinitely postponed. At least three different gangs want the dog back and have placed "lost dog ads" in the newspapers. Every time Bill goes to answer an ad, he finds a dead body on the premises and always manages to leave panicky clues that he was at the crime scene. He is repeatedly hauled to the police station and grilled by homicide chief O'Ryan.
Meek mild "Max The Umbrella" is assigned to 24-hour rain or shine lookout duty at the spot where the dog was supposed to pass by and deliver the message. When Kate happens to walk past the spot with the dog, Max thinks she's "part of the mob" and hands her the goods, 100 thousand dollars in counterfeit money. Once that mistake is discovered, the surviving mobsters converge on the Denny home for a showdown.
They end up shooting each other dead, except for Pinky as Bill tricks him into backing out a high window and knocking himself out.
With the sizeable reward money on many of the gangsters, Bill and Kate can finally buy their own house and get away from the interfering mother-in-law. But Archie remains a permanent part of the family.
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler wrote: "The effort, to put it bluntly, is only fitfully bright and chucklesome. And. though the principals go at their tasks with a will, the strain of sustaining a thin theme is occasionally too much for the laboring cast. ... Call it a haphazard merry-go-round carrying more than its share of misunderstandings." [4]
Following the film's Kansas City premiere, a review in The Kansas City Star stated: "The Jerry Wald-Norman Krasna production team has engineered a wild and wooly comedy involving gangsters and a young married couple, which, after a somewhat complicated start necessary to lay the groundwork, moves into high gear and largely retains that accelerated pace through the zany finish." [5]
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