Opiniones de usuarios

Ex Marks the Spot (1940)

** (out of 4)

In order to get out of paying alimony, Buster Keaton allows his ex and her new boyfriend to move into his home but all hell breaks loose. This here's another Columbia short that manages to get a few laughs but there's not too many here and this is certainly far from Keaton's classic work. This film (and the previous one) were directed by Jules White, which might explain the Three Stooges like humor that just doesn't work with the silent legend.

Available in Columbia's Buster Keaton set.

This is an atrocious short film with the appallingly awful pair of untalented so-called comics Elsie Ames and Matt McHugh. Both have slim filmographies, which is no surprise. How the two found work at all considering how obnoxious they are makes one wonder. Keaton tries his best, but he is overwhelmed by the pair and the poor direction of Jules White combined with the terrible sound effects. It is just a lost cause.

Looking at a Jules White-directed Keaton short, one can almost see them battling behind the scenes, White a proponent of smashing things and slapping people, and Buster trying for elaboration. Given that they shot these shorts on a three-day schedule, there is a lot of cheating going on, mostly through undercranking the camera to get Buster through one of his falls. Yet this is a highly entertaining short, particularly in the first half, as Buster fights with his ex-wife's trunk for some of his trademark falls. Even Elsie Ames gets some excellent pratfalls in.

Buster also gets to do some real acting here, and people who think of him as stone-faced do not really watch him. He shows an enormous range of emotion even though he doesn't smile. In many of the Jules White shorts, he seems mentally deficient, but here he is, struggling to make the best of a bad situation: his ex-wife's alimony means that he and his new wife are suffering, so he comes up with the idea of having his ex-wife move in, which will save on the living expenses. It's a crack-brained idea, but Buster perseveres. Yes, there are many crude Jules White touches, but it's a Buster Keaton movie and he and the audience win in the end. Give this one a try.