Tomalio

"Tomalio" is one of the six Vitaphone shorts (filmed in Coney Island, Brooklyn) which comprise the entire talking-picture career of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle after his long and unfair blacklisting from the screen. (Arbuckle was put on trial three times for rape and murder, was eventually acquitted, but was stigmatised afterwards as if he'd been guilty.) Five of those comedy shorts are brilliant little gems, very funny. "Tomalio" is the clinker of the bunch. It isn't funny at all.

The skimpy plot of this film finds Roscoe in a Latin American country called Tomalio (pronounced "Tamale-Oh", as in hot tamales). Nothing much happens, and none of it's funny. "Tomalio" screens like a dress rehearsal for all the corny gags about hot-blooded Latin American stereotypes that would later turn up in Bob Hope's debut film "Going Spanish" (a movie which Hope always reviled).

But it's a pleasure to see Roscoe in any movie. Considering the long nightmare he lived through in his personal life, we can forgive Roscoe for dropping the tamale this time round. I can't recommend "Tomalio" to anyone except a die-hard Arbuckle fan, but his other five Vitaphone shorts are all hilarious and deserving of your attention.

Tomalio is the final film of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle who died shortly after this was completed never having made a comeback from the scandal involving him with the death of Virginia Rappe. You could see that Fatty's heart's not in this, the film is not all that funny from his end. The real laughs in Tomalio come from Charles Judel who plays a South American general who has a firing squad that can't shoot straight.

Arbuckle is paired with another comic named Fritz Hubert and the pair seem to have an identity crisis in terms of who's the comic and who's the straight man. The two are in his mythical South American country of Tomalio where they just seem to be getting in the wig constantly of Judel who is a legend in his own mind.

Sad that Fatty Arbuckle's career had to end on such a mediocre note as Tomalio.

In the 1910s and early 20s, Fatty Arbuckle was one of the biggest comedy stars on the big screen. However, after a well publicized rape trial (the jury in the re-trail went so far as to pen a letter saying Arbuckle was completely innocent), his career was in free- fall. Only in the late 1920s was he able to get some work as a director using a pseudonym. Then, in the early 30s, Vitaphone (a division of Warner Brothers) made some comedy shorts starring Arbuckle and things were looking up for him. But most of the shorts were not especially good and he died very young...right after making "Tomalio".

"Tomalio", sadly, isn't a very good film. Most of the humor comes from watching the Generalissimo of this small country and Arbuckle himself wasn't all that good in this one. I blame the writers, as he proved in "Hey, Pop!" (1932) that he still had it. The problem is that often he just stands there...and funny (or at least semi- funny) stuff takes place around him. Not a terrible film but a poor way to end his long comedy career.

Tomalio (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The sixth and final film that Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle made for Vitaphone also turned out to be his last film. This, and the previous three films, were all released after the actor's death and sadly this here is the worst of the bunch. In the film he plays a rather dimwitted man who along with a friend (Fritz Hubert) find themselves in a South American location where they go up against a General who likes to put people in front of a firing squad. It's always amazed me at how many great actors have ended their careers making very bad movies. I guess we really can't hold this one against Arbuckle too much since four of the six movies were unreleased at the time of his death so I'm sure the studio held this one for last since they knew it was a stinker. There's really no reason to watch this picture unless you're just a fan of Arbuckle who wants to see everything the actor did or just have a curiosity because this was his last film to get released. Either way, there really aren't too many laughs here because the majority of the running time just repeats the same bad jokes over and over. Even worse is that Arbuckle himself seems rather bored with the material and the supporting players don't add anything good. It's funny but the following year Bob Hope would appear in a similar film called GOING Spanish, which is even worse than this one.

This one of the late Fatty Arbuckle's last films released after his passing. Here, he travels to a Central American country where he encounters an execution-happy dictator. I'll stop there and just say the gags were mild amusing at best. Still, Tomalio is at the least worth a look.