Charlot et Fatty dans le ring

The second half or so of this Keystone comedy is quite enjoyable, with a lot of good material. The first half is sometimes amusing, but for the most part it really only serves to set up the last part. Roscoe Arbuckle was skilled at performing almost any kind of comic material, but he is much more fun to watch when he has something good to work with. Charlie Chaplin's appearance in the last part of the movie also adds quite a bit.

The setup has Arbuckle getting hoodwinked into a boxing match with a champion opponent. It takes rather a while to prepare for the 'main event', and some of the material in the first half really isn't that creative. But once the match begins, with Chaplin appearing as a timid, hapless referee, things really get rolling. It's a lengthy, amusing sequence that's not unworthy of being mentioned with the boxing sequences in some of Chaplin's own movies. It's well worth watching this part over again to catch all of the subtle gags that Chaplin throws in.

Arbuckle is still the star here, though, and it ends up being a decent showcase for him to perform slapstick and feats of agility, plus a few mannerisms and facial expressions. It would have been better if some of the unnecessarily complicated setup material had been streamlined, but even as it stands it has some good laughs.

I saw a new 32-minute restoration of this film (courtesy of the Chaplin Keystone restoration project) and came away with the feeling that half an hour was too long; the film degenerates into endless repetitive scenes that the more mature comedy shorts of the 1920s would have trimmed drastically to greater effect. However, reading other users' comments, I get the impression that the material previously edited out of "The Knockout" was actually the early, plot-based part of the picture -- hardly an improvement!

There are some funny bits; chiefly those that are allowed to stand as one-off gags and not over-milked by repetition. Don't (as if this needed mentioning!) look for realism -- the film clearly features the pair of six-shooters with the largest number of consecutive charges in the world, for a start...

There is, incidentally, no knockout in this boxing match. Much other activity, though; including Minta Durfee as a girlfriend with a decided taste for fisticuffs, Charlie Chaplin in a long-shot cameo as the referee, and a brooding Mack Swain apparently having trouble with his moustaches.

Roscoe Arbuckle takes on a prize fighter in this Keystone short, and somehow ends up firing guns while wearing boxing gloves during a rooftop chase. Plenty of frantic pandemonium, and a scene-stealing appearance from Charlie Chaplin as the referee, but it's all a bit messy.

Roscoe Arbuckle, ably supported, makes barrels of fun in this two-reel comedy release. In its early stages, the story has a particularly well-connected plot, but things go to smash a little in this line when a big chase is introduced in the second reel. This chase, as well as a comedy prize fight, is unusually funny. - The Moving Picture World, July 4, 1914

"The Knockout" (1914, Avery) "The Knockout" is more of a Fatty Arbuckle film than a Charlie Chaplin film as Charlie appears as an interfering boxing referee in a segment of the film. With a fair amount of action and a hilarious fight scene to start it off, and introduce us to Arbuckle's character Pug, this is a better than average 1914 film but still a bit tedious after the boxing match. Apparently, firing guns into the air and at people was cause for hilarity. Pug even runs around struggling to work double fisted with pistols and boxing gloves still on. One dis-jointed from reality marker in the shooting sequence is that everybody reacts to getting hit like someone just hit them with a paintball or a rubber bullet. The film's highlights inevitably involve Arbuckle's great physical comedy aided and abetted by his physique as well as Charlie who is great as the referee who keeps stumbling into the fighters during the first round and joins the match in the second round much to the delight of the audience (both on screen and off!). Drop-kicks, rock throwing, shooting, boxing…c'mon, what's missing? Not a bad effort and much better than some of the other Keystone 1914 films.