MovieDude-4

How can you understand where we are if you don't know where we came from? This series should be required viewing for all students who believe that everything manufactured comes from China to Wal-Mart. An astounding exposition of the sources of the modern industrial world and for examples of how the methods of construction and manufacture were once found by some brave individuals -- and by some unscrupulous ones -- in Britain. I cannot speak too highly of this series. To see the size of the machinery and constructions such as bridges, canals, railways, engines and factories which were built by extremely hard working men with often the simplest and crudest of tools should surely give pause to the most blasé of us. The sheer power of the steam engines built by the Victorians is stunning and their willingness to take physical and financial risks is an example of the best of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Donald O'Connor does an amazing job recreating Buster Keaton's style and routines in this otherwise dreadful script, credited to Sidney Sheldon and Robert Smith. Buster was arguably a finer comedian than Chaplin, but fell into alcoholism for a number of reasons. This script has so little to do with his life it should never have been titled as it was. Read a real biography, and watch some of Buster's many wonderful movies, including his last, "The Railrodder". I remember watching "Waterworld (1995)", and thinking how poorly it compared to "Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)", not least on value for the money expended on making it. And don't watch another movie until you have seen "The General (1927)". His movies are his biography, not this rotten script.