Der Metzgergeselle

This film certainly wasn't very sophisticated. No, the humor was in fact pretty dumb now that I think about it. But, also while I think of it, I did laugh--proving decent comedy doesn't need to be very deep.

Fatty Arbuckle is the definite star of this short, despite Buster Keaton's appearing in the film as well. He is the butcher in an old-time grocery store. A lot of silly stuff occurred in the store and I think I laughed the most at the coffee grinder sequence--you'll just have to see it yourself.

Anyway, later, Fatty's girlfriend is forced to go to a girls' school and because he can't stand to part, he dresses in drag and infiltrates the school. Arbuckle is one ugly woman! So, for silly and unsophisticated fun, see this film. It won't change your life and is a very slight picture, but it's also fun.

This Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle comedy is best remembered for featuring a young Buster Keaton, fresh from splitting with his family's roughhouse Vaudeville act, in his film debut. Buster gets quite a substantial part in this film and it's quite a funny one overall. "The Butcher Boy" has lots of laughs and is an example of pure old-fashioned slapstick done well, though it would seem to come from the brief era of two-reel comedies when filmmakers still imagined in one-reel segments as a matter of course.

The first half of the film takes place in a general store, with Arbuckle as the the butcher boy of the title. It's an excuse to mine the many possibilities for fast physical humor that a general store provides, and Arbuckle really shows himself to be a 300-pound acrobat, demonstrating subtlety, skill, and grace in his performance of what might have been unremarkable slapstick routines that raise them to a different level. A running gag has him flipping a large butcher knife casually so that it spins accurately into it's proper position stuck into the cutting board, and I'm still stunned that Arbuckle really seems to do it each time. There's also a really nice gag that sees him leaning on his scale and confused as to why his cuts of meat weigh so much.

Buster Keaton is a boy who comes into to buy some molasses, and performs deftly in a foot-stuck-to-floor routine that follows. Apart from the odd and almost unsettling half-smile, his idiosyncratic attitude and body language make him recognizable immediately as the Buster we know. He even has his eventually-trademarked flattened hat -- here destroyed for the first time when filled, of course, with molasses.

The second half of the film moves into more situation-based comedy and Arbuckle and his rival Al St. John dress in drag to infiltrate Fatty's girlfriend's boarding school. A lot of the humor also comes from the generally surreal and mysteriously laugh-inducing sight of these two odd fellows wearing drag and trying to "be girls." buster is in this segment too, but mostly stands there in the occasional cutaway, helping St. John.

The ending of "The Butcher Boy" becomes a little emptily frenetic, but on the whole and beyond its historical curiosity interest, it's a well-done comedy that gets just the knockabout laughs it is going for.

... but don't get your hopes up about Buster contributing that much to this short. He was invited to participate by the short's actual star, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. That's not me calling Mr. Arbuckle names, but is actually his name in the credits of his films.

Fatty is an employee in a general store of the period, and he loves the proprietor's daughter, Amanda. The owner doesn't want Fatty anywhere near his daughter and sends her to a boarding school where men are not allowed and Amanda is only allowed mail from her parents. Fatty decides to dress up like Amanda's female cousin so that he can see her, but a fellow rival for Amanda, Slim (Al St. John), has a similar idea. So the store portion comprises the first half and the boarding school portion the second half.

This short is pure 1910's comedy with food fights, lots of flour throwing, and pants -kicking. Buster is just a guest star in all of this, with his main contribution being posing as a grocery store customer who comes in to get some molasses but winds up with it in his hat and stuck to his head and with it stuck to the bottom of his shoes so that he cannot walk.

Buster's role in the creative process of Arbuckle's shorts increased over the couple of years that they worked together such that, by the time of their last collaboration in "The Garage" in 1920, you can definitely see that Keaton's brand of gadget filled comedy and complex gags have won the day.

The Butcher Boy was Buster Keaton's first steps into the world of cinema. And for this reason alone, the film has made its own niche in cinematic history. Although it stars Fatty Arbuckle, Fatty was unusually generous in allowing Buster a considerable amount of film time, considering how new Buster was to the medium. The Butcher Boy opens up at a butcher shop where Fatty, the butcher, deals with a number of customers in his own unique way. One, of which, happens to be Buster. The 21 year old Buster interacts with the veteran Arbuckle like someone who has been doing this all his life (a tribute to his vaudeville training). From the butcher shop the scene shifts to an all girl school in which Fatty, trying to sneak a visit with his girlfriend, disguises himself as a girl (dressing in drag seems to be a recurring theme in Fatty's films). His rival for the girl, Al St. John, does the same thing and utilizes Buster to assist him in an attempted kidnapping of the object of his affection. The plot, as with just about every comedic short of that era, has the feel of being made up on the spot. And although the film is void of any real belly laughs there are a few moments that might illicit a chuckle or two. However, the film stands best as simply a curiosity, and will always be remembered not so much as another Arbuckle film, but rather as the film that began the impressive film career of one of the true geniuses of comedy, Buster Keaton.

The early two reelers of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and his young apprentice Buster Keaton offer a rare opportunity to glimpse the genesis of Keaton's soon to become indelible comic persona, but beyond their not inconsiderable academic interest each is also a lot of fun. When they first met, Arbuckle was an established star while Keaton was only a vaudeville performer with little knowledge of the embryonic movie business, but all that changed when Fatty invited him onto the set of 'The Butcher Boy', and from their first moment on screen together the rapport between the two comedians is instantly apparent. Neither makes any attempt to out-stage the other and their talents are remarkably well matched, with Arbuckle the rotund but surprisingly graceful lead and Keaton (among others) as the acrobatic foil who took the pratfalls. Like all the early Arbuckle/Keaton comedies, 'The Butcher Boy' is loose, unstructured, unsophisticated, spontaneous, primitive, completely informal, and made in the same fun spirit in which they were meant to be seen.