Coney Island

New York City's beach-side Coney Island amusement park is the setting. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle plays in the sand with inattentive wife Agnes Neilson. Fatty leaves her and goes to enjoy the rides and attractions at Luna. Fatty's friendly rivals Buster Keaton and Al St. John are there, causing laughter. The three men vie for the attentions of pretty Alice Mann. Fatty's yen for women's clothing increases the merriment and a few Keystone Kops later join in the fun. The cast is in good form, with the men famously physical. Keaton's stunts are the most daring. He also cries and laughs herein, well before his character's non-emotional "stone face" was cemented. This two-reel short seems cobbled, but is recommended more for its cast, setting and physical comedy.

****** Coney Island (10/29.1917) Roscoe Arbuckle ~ Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Al St. John, Agnes Neilson

Coney Island is a quick churn out with thirty minutes of standard slapstick and pratfalls featuring silent giants Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. Arbuckle was the biggest (figuratively speaking) thing in silents at the time save Charlie Chaplin and its easy to see how this self effacing big kid with a sweet face to match must have regaled the audiences of his day.

In Coney Island he plays a bored husband at the beach and though susceptible to adultery and forced to don female attire and hang out in the ladies dressing room Fatty easily sanitizes the whole situation with his cherubic arrested development.

Buster Keaton plays a supporting role that offers more than the stone face he would maintain in his prime and while the injury producing stunts are well in evidence it's unpleasantly out of character to see Buster busting a gut laughing or breaking into tears. Al St. John matches Buster in pratfalls and Alice Neilson as Fatty's wife is comically and forcefully shrewish but Coney Island is little more than a basic Keystone Cops two reeler filled with the obligatory orgy of people falling down and being batted about the face an head.

Considering the popularity of Roscoe Arbuckle, I have been disappointed by the few features I've seen him in. Coney Island is an OK 2 reeler, filmed at Coney Island in 1917. That's the major point of interest: Coney Island. Blah story that makes little sense is a series of badly done pratfalls on dry land and in the sea. Arbuckle dresses up as a fat lady but this gag goes nowhere. Buster Keaton is his rival for the interest of Alice Mann. Keaton (very early in his film career) is OK; Mann has weird hair. Worst of all is the grotesque Al St. John, as a bow-legged and toothless goon. He overacts and is repulsive. Agnes Neilson plays the wife (so why is Fatty chasing Mann?) and looks like a youngish Maude Eburne. Along with the plot less story, what's missing here (compared to Chaplin's and Lloyd's films of the same era) is precision. Arbuckle's many pratfalls are obviously staged and even when he's supposed to be getting hit, it never really looks like it--he just reacts. Keaton fares better here but has little to do. Also, while Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton all developed personae that fit their styles of comedy, Arbuckle has little to offer other than being fat. His character has no personality. Based on this lack and his 1921 "feature," Leap Year, I doubt that Arbuckle would have had much of a starring career as the 1920s progressed and film audiences grew more sophisticated.

This was a mostly funny film of seeing Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Al St. John, all of whom are competing for the same girl, hit and getting hit by various objects at Coney Island. I say mostly, because by the end, the short was almost running out of steam especially with Arbuckle's battle-ax of a wife continuing to appear. Arbuckle also dresses as a woman-having stolen another plus-size bathing suit from a female stranger because there wasn't a male suit for him-to hilarious effect especially when St. John flirts with him! The cop chase wasn't as funny but by that time I didn't care. So if you love knockabout silent slapstick comedy, I highly recommend Coney Island.

When you watch several Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's movies in a row then you can notice that he was quite one note comedian, unlike his much more famous colleagues Charles Chaplin or Buster Keaton. In 'Coney Island' Fatty doesn't fight for the love of a woman, in this one he tries to evade his wife to spend the fun day at the luna park. Still, he meets gorgeous girl to whom he falls in love and again he has to fight off competition. At least 'Coney Island' doesn't include too much food fights, only couple of ice creams get thrown around, but Fatty still dresses up as a woman. This time he does it for the access into the bathing house.

Good enough to pass 25 minutes to get couple of laughs (mostly from Buster, though).