Battling Sisters

Jiggly print eudcational could there be more women in war by 1980?

Late for a silent

When the Lupino Lane story begins, the narration states that in the World War, women served as well as men...which is true that some served as nurses, drivers and the like. So, the film then supposedly shows you war in 1980...when men stay at home and act like ladies and the woman spit and fight the wars. For the most part, the film is essentially one joke...showing feminized men and macho women during the battle.

For a silent comedy, 1929 is very late as most studios had by then switched to sound. But considering Educational Pictures was a relatively small and cheap studio, it continuing to make silents makes some sense. Plus, most theaters outside the USA still lacked sound by that time.

So is this any good? Well, it has its moments though most of the laughs are a bit tiresome. Seeing women act tough and men not so tough is a change...but it alone isn't enough to sustain a comedy. Most of the comedy consists of the tough women trying to woo Lane...which makes you wonder if after a long time fighting the war that they've all forgotten what men look like! Overall, a mildly funny and reasonably enjoyable short.

In the future this movie posits, women will fight all the wars, and men will keep the home fires burning.

I am not fond of these gender-reversal comedies of the era, since they usually rely solely on the joke of women wearing pants and behaving like the jerks that men do at their worst.

This movie, however, is a lot funnier than usual, in part because of the way it references famous shots from other movies like THE BIG PARADE, and characters like von Stroheim as a rapacious German officer. It also gives Lupino Lane a chance to be battered around by big women. Its certainly not the only movie in which he does that. He also does a couple of the acrobatic moves that only he seemed to essay, like a neck kip that extends to his toes, and his reverse split.