Triple Trouble

Charlie Chaplin left Essanay studios after about a year because the studio "big wigs" began cutting and splicing his films even after he was guaranteed control over his films. They reneged on the bargain, so Chaplin sued (unsuccessfully).

About two years after his break, some idiots at Essanay had the sleazy idea of taking deleted film scenes, his last previous complete Essanay short (POLICE, 1916) and splicing in some NEW scenes to make a "new" Chaplin short. The result, while not 100% horrible, is a confusing mess of a story compared to other Chaplin shorts. Plus, it just seemed wrong to even release the film. My advice is see it to see what this final product looked like from a historical perspective but don't see it for its artistic merit.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

Made when he had actually left Mutual in a period where the style that was starting to evolve with Essanay was found and setting one up for his prime, 'Triple Trouble' instead feels like a misfire from Keystone. Which is not a good position to be in when Chaplin had come on such a long way since then by this point. It is a patchwork of three of his previous films made and released during inferior (so fledgling and adolescence) periods and does it very cheaply. Have just read that Chaplin didn't authorise the making of 'Triple Trouble' and that is hardly surprising as there is a reeking of studio interference feel here. He had really matured by this point and it was not something that he would do to his films.

Chaplin himself is fine, Edna Purviance is charming, Billy Armstrong amuses and the chemistry works. Can't fault the performances here.

There are parts that raise a smile and the film doesn't look too bad in photography and settings.

However, the storytelling is disjointed and confused, close to incoherent even (something that rarely is used for criticising the not so good efforts from Chaplin, this is the first work actually of his when reviewing them where incoherence has been used as a criticism). The patchwork approach to it makes everything choppy and the scenes included from previous work are like scrappy fragments with less than flowing editing and little relevance to each other. There is definitely a more-than-one short film in one feel here with the utilisation of those three and that is essentially what 'Triple Trouble' is. And it certainly does not feel like a short film but more an unnecessary "cheater". The hodgepodge of additional scenes fares even worse.

Furthermore, it made it difficult to appreciate or be amused by the humour, none of the content being close to Chaplin's best work, even when they were from efforts released not long before the material already feels old, and vastly inferior even to everything he did at Mutual. Plus even though his Keystone period was very variable, none of the work during that period had the problem of being unnecessary. A lot of the content reeks of incompleteness where gags were not cooked all the way through or finished properly, and everything feels old and tired. Even the continuity is a mess.

Overall, a big misfire but not one that can be put at Chaplin's door when he had nothing to do with it. 4/10 Bethany Cox

TRIPLE TROUBLE was made up scraps from old Essanay takes that Chaplin decided not to use. It was made up of old bits and pieces from WORK, POLICE and an unfinished feature, LIFE. Chaplin did not authorize this patchwork film. It was put together with new footage directed by Leo White. In all fairness to Chaplin, he did not even authorize this production to be made. In 1918, he was making films like A DOG'S LIFE and SHOULDER ARMS. The only difference between TRIPLE TROUBLE and the countless other patchwork compilation films mad during the "Chaplin craze" is that this film offers footage not to be found anywhere else. For that it may be worth seeing, even though it is not up to Chaplin's usual standards. Interestingly enough, though, he included this film in his filmography published in his autobiography.

The visual quality of the print I watched was poor and my mind kept wandering as I watched which I thought might be the reason why I found the plot of this film so difficult to follow. Then I looked on IMDb and everything became clear. This isn't one film so much as a patchwork of deleted scenes from two of Chaplin's old films for Essanay (the studio he left three years before this was released) and new material which didn't feature Chaplin at all. The result is the kind of irritating mess you'd expect when it's creation is prompted by the desire to make a quick buck rather than any the result of any creative drive. I wouldn't waste your time on this one unless you're a Chaplin completist...

Although it's a confusing, generally unfunny mess, the feeble quality of "Triple Trouble" is by no means Charlie Chaplin's fault. As others have also pointed out, this "comedy" was patched together at the Essanay Studio from some old, unused Chaplin footage, with some other material thrown in. The piecemeal approach definitely shows - little in the movie makes sense, and there are only a few humorous moments.

The story tries to tie together Chaplin's characters from a couple of other movies, one apparently unreleased, with some other characters whose purpose is never clearly established. Only the presence of Chaplin makes any of it watchable, and the only real interest is to see some old footage of Chaplin that otherwise would not have been released. Just as today's studios continually re-use the same stale plot ideas, apparently in the hope that the public will swallow anything with a familiar name in the cast, so also this seems to have been just an attempt to get one more movie out of Chaplin's name, after he himself had gone on to bigger things.