Hold 'er Sheriff

I noticed in the previous review by boblipton (and he always seems to write excellent reviews) that ne noticed that this short was only 13 minutes long even though IMDB says it's 21 minutes. He assumes it was edited down, though it also is possible IMDB simply is wrong about the running time.

As for the story, I had no idea what to expect. After all, I've seen about two dozen of Marjorie Bebee's shorts and they are NOT consistent. Some are terrible, some are very good and some are in the middle. I'd place this one towards the terrible, though it's watchable and not offensive. The only problem is that until the end of the film, there are no laughs.

Sheriff's daughter Marjorie Beebe is in love with piano-playing James Murray. When her father informs her Murray is a criminal, she joins his gang.

There's a good comedy idea in the script, but, alas, the copy I saw was edited down from 21 minutes to a bare 13, so all that Miss Beebe gets to do here is mug a bit, while the bare bones of the plot proceeds with little in the way of amusement in the remains. Neither are the players with larger roles given much in the way to do. Instead, Murray plays and sings a couple of songs, and while that might work well enough in 21 minutes, at the length this currently shows at, it's not enough.