A good movie

Recently, I have been focusing on Buster Keaton’s work and, from all his movies I have seen so far, even if this movie actually has a solid reputation, it was the one which impressed me the least. I mean, it was still fun but there were a couple of things that did bother me. For example, there were a few black characters involved, more than you would usually get in a Keaton feature, which wasn’t a bad thing but the way they were represented was more than questionable. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that there was even a white dude wearing some blackface make-up which was just so downright offensive, even if it was probably rather common back in those days. Concerning the rest of the movie, it was basically a classic comedic gimmick which has been used so many times afterwards but it wasn’t really great (In fact, even Keaton himself apparently didn’t care much for it either). Furthermore, I wonder if it wouldn’t have better worked as a short feature. Indeed, with only around 25 mins of the running time, I would have started almost right away with the newspaper ad (everything happening before was only mildly amusing). From that point on, the whole thing became some kind of endless chase involving Keaton and seemingly hundreds of women running after him and even if it was maybe not the most original thing in the world, it still worked fine though. Basically, not only it was visually really neat but the damned thing finally became seriously entertaining to behold. Anyway, to conclude, even if this movie is rather overrated in my opinion, it was still fun and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Buster Keaton’s work.

7/10