The Rough House

Watching The Rough House and other independent Arbuckle shorts, I am reminded of the sort of films I made with my friends when I was in junior high and high school. Weird, plot-less things where being funny and acting strange reigned over any sense of story or coherence. It's obvious watching these films that everyone involved in their making was having a great time, barely able to keep themselves from cracking up in the middle of a take.

However, The Rough House is not among Arbuckle's better efforts due to this meandering. Much of the short is a flurry of people hitting, kicking, shouting, and falling over. The best moments come in when the comedy comes from the characters, such as the lazy Arbuckle nonchalantly trying to put out the fire raging on his bed from a cigarette butt he dropped or the jealous cook played by Al St. John overreacting to the comely maid flirting with a delivery boy played by Buster Keaton in his second film appearance. Everything else is underwhelming, even random.

Housekeeping chaos for a well-off homeowner, his small cooking/cleaning staff and a visiting party of refined dinner guests with ulterior motives. As with most slapstick comedies of the day, it only takes a little nudge to transition from a sleepy ho-hum day around the house into a full-blown food fight with smoke in the air and a never-ending parade of head-over-heels pratfalls. This one spirals out of control in a hurry, with Fatty Arbuckle setting the bedroom ablaze before he's had his morning coffee and Buster Keaton flopping flat on his back twice in his first sixty seconds, then snowballs until Arbuckle is gleefully empying a gun into his own kitchen door while Keaton hurls butcher knives at the chef.

Honestly, there's very little to The Rough House beyond sight gags and ever-increasing stakes in a high rollers' game of physical one-upsmanship, but it's a riot when it's in the groove. Arbuckle and Keaton's brands of expressive comedy are compatible and complimentary, and their constant efforts to out-goof each other lead to increasingly rich rewards for the viewer. It doesn't mean much of anything, but it's a hilarious way to kill half an hour.

Rough House, The (1917)

*** (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle helps run a seaside resort but trouble starts when a deliver boy (Buster Keaton) shows up. It's rather amazing to see how much time the star/director Fatty gave to Keaton who's allowed to steal the show with his physical comedy. Another interesting thing is that there's a dinner scene where Fatty puts forks in two rolls and does a dance, which Chaplin borrowed eight years later in The Gold Rush.

Butcher Boy, The (1917)

** (out of 4)

The butcher boy (Fatty Arbuckle) falls for the store owner's daughter and must fight to get her. The first half of the film takes place in the store and has Buster Keaton playing an obnoxious customer. This half is very funny but the second half dealing with Fatty dressing in drag in order to sneak into a boarding school really doesn't work.

This is a pretty poor film in some ways. First, although Buster Keaton is in the film, he is not given much to do. Instead, Fatty Arbuckle is clearly the star and Keaton and Al St. John are just along for the ride.

The film has a few cute moments, such as the incredibly slow and lazy way that Fatty responds to a fire he accidentally started in the house. But, unfortunately, too much of the film is mindless slapstick--punching, kicking and falling for little apparent reason. While this was very popular in the early days of film, by 1917, this was fortunately becoming passé. Not that the violence and action was bad, but that films in the early days had almost no plot--just action and hitting. This film unfortunately didn't find the right balance--just way too much mindless pratfalls.

Haven't seen much of Arbuckle since I was a kid and, on the evidence of this effort, I haven't really missed much. I can't help wondering how famous Arbuckle's name would be today had his career not been destroyed by the Virginia Rappe affair. Probably as famous as Larry Semon, who was also big in the silent era but is now all but forgotten - and with good reason.

Arbuckle is outshone in every scene by his sidekick, Buster Keaton. This was only Keaton's second film but his technique is already far in advance of Fatty's. The story is non-existent, merely a prop on which to hang the relentless stream of pratfalls and sight gags. That's OK if the gags are funny and their execution spot on, but only Keaton is getting it right, so the laughs are few and far between. As others have pointed out already, its Fatty's lackadaisical attempts to put out a fire and his sausage-on-a-fork dance, which pre-empts Charlie the tramp's more famous version by a good seven years, that rise above the mediocre.