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A strictly routine Arbuckle comedy in which most of the laughs are to be found following the belated entry of a young Buster Keaton, who is mistaken for store assistant Roscoe's bride-to-be. Modern-day viewers will no doubt find some racist gags and a scene in which Roscoe deliberately chloroforms a young woman so that he can kiss her as she sleeps offensive.

Buster Keaton had practically grown up on the stage. At three, the son of the owner of a traveling show along with the magician Harry Houdini, joined his father in a skit which had him disobeying his dad, only to be physically tossed around for his insubordination. Occasionally, Joe, his dad, was arrested for child abuse after the show. But young Keaton showed authorities his body sustained no bruises despite tossed into the scenery, the orchestra pit and even into the audience. The young boy learned how to fall. "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand," Keaton later said. "It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."

Buster was having such a good time getting thrown around he would giggle after he landed, causing the audience to become silent. He saw if he possessed a deadpan face after the stunts, the theatergoers howled in laughter. Transporting that trait onto film, he earned the nickname "The Great Stone Face."

It's a rarity Keaton was caught smiling in film. One of the few times he does appears in his third movie with Fatty, Aug. 1917's "His Wedding Night." Keaton plays a delivery boy bringing Fatty's fiancee, Alice, her wedding dress. Alice asks Buster to try it on to see if she likes it. He does, and he emerges from behind a partition smiling.

In a scene earlier in the movie, when a luxurious car pulls up to Fatty's outdoor gas pump, seen in the back seat are two women. One was Natalie Talmadge of the famous acting Talmadge sisters, who later were owners of their own studio. Natalie worked for Fatty as a script girl/secretary when she met Keaton. The two later fell in love, married, and had two children.

His Wedding Night (1917)

** (out of 4)

Fatty once again has to fight for the woman he wants to marry. Going through these films in order I've noticed that each one basically has the same storyline and always has a food fight. This is getting a tad bit boring but Buster Keaton has a small role and brings some laughs.

Oh Doctor (1917)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Dr. Fatty gets in trouble when a woman he flirts with turns out to be a thief with his wife's jewelry on her mind. The best aspect is Buster Keaton playing Fatty's son and being constantly abused by daddy.

Out West (1918)

*** (out of 4)

Spoof of the western genre has Fatty Arbuckle landing in a small town being over run by thugs. Buster Keaton plays the timid sheriff. There are minor laughs throughout the film but it really works due to its wonderful charm and the fact that the spoofs work for westerns even made within the past few decades. There's some off colored racial humor, which might insult some.

Buster Keaton posing after trying on the wedding dress is hilarious, and worth the price of admission. Roscoe Arbuckle using chloroform to knock a woman out and then kiss her is not. Giving the black customer charcoal as a skin product was regrettable too. On top of those things, not much of the exaggerated antics work, e.g. The rival for the woman's affections choking people and trying to gnaw their faces when angry (Al St. John, Arbuckle's real-life nephew). Arbuckle tries to get the most he can out of each bit though, like randomly taking a sip from the gasoline pump as if it were a garden hose at the end of that scene, or sticking his head between the donkey's legs from behind in the effort to get it to move. He's not that appealing, but it's watchable for Buster Keaton. Just seeing Buster smile and wink at the end in this pre-Great Stone Face period was fantastic.

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton made several enjoyable two-reel comedies together during Buster's apprenticeship as a filmmaker, but in my opinion His Wedding Night is not one of their better collaborations. It's an early credit for Buster, his fourth film, and he doesn't appear until almost the halfway point, but within moments of his entrance -- as a dress maker's delivery boy on a bike -- he promptly steals the show with a spectacular flip over the bicycle rack. (And he made such stunts look easy! Easy for him, anyway.) Buster also appears in drag, in a wedding gown no less, and milks his entrance in this costume for all it's worth.

Meanwhile, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is up to his usual tricks. Here he's a clerk in a drug store, elaborately mixing malted drinks, flipping utensils in the air and deftly catching them. The location offers ample opportunity for of Keystone-style shenanigans, as when Fatty tussles with a mule, insults customers, bilks a rich man out of money for "gasoline" that is actually water, and once again engages in a rivalry with nasty Al St. John over a pretty girl. It's no mystery why Al St. John's character is always so unappealing in these comedies -- for one thing, when the girl jilts him he has a tendency to assault her, as he does here -- but it's remarkable that Arbuckle manages to be so likable when he behaves as he does. In this film, for instance, a running gag involving chloroform leads to a moment when Fatty deliberately renders a pretty girl unconscious so he can kiss her. You may or may not find that gag funny, but when he performs it Roscoe comes off like a naughty boy, not a pervert. Within a few years, of course, after the sex scandal that destroyed his reputation and his career, it would have been impossible for Arbuckle to have performed such a scene without stirring deeply unpleasant associations in viewers' minds.

Over all this film feels like a somewhat routine effort, not as inspired as the best Arbuckle/Keaton shorts produced for Roscoe's "Comique" company. For me it's marred by an interlude of racial humor near the beginning that leaves a sour after-taste. The scene involves a customer in the store, an African-American lady who is the butt of several gags -- literally, in one instance. Racial gags turn up frequently in silent comedy, and the scene in His Wedding Night is far from being the worst offender in the Comique series (that dubious distinction belongs to a mean-spirited sequence in Out West which ruins that film), but the bottom line where this comedy is concerned is that the material in question simply isn't funny.

The best Comique shorts, such as The Bell Boy and The Garage, are full of inventive gags and routines that still provoke laughs. His Wedding Night doesn't hold up nearly so well, but the limber young Buster Keaton provides it with some enjoyable moments, and he remains the best reason to watch.