Carlitos e a Patroa

For about the first two thirds of The Landlady's Pet ( that's the real title, by the way - The Star Boarder was the former title, but ultimately it was changed) it seems that it is going to come across as three distinctly separate parts - the first third, where Charlie is the "star boarder," the landlady's favorite lodger to the chagrin of her jealous husband, the drunken scene, and the obnoxious son's disruptive magic lantern show.

But as soon as the lantern show begins it becomes clear that it is going to tie the rest of the film together, which is something that Chaplin wasn't doing much during that first year making Keystone short comedies for Mack Sennett. The drunken scene is sort of a straggler, it doesn't seem to have any reason for being there other than that Chaplin can do it so well (so well, in fact, that Robert Downey Jr. included it as part of his performance in the phenomenal 1992 film about Chaplin's life), the conclusion of the film and the tying up of loose ends is a welcome surprise.

Watch for Gordon Griffith, a mainstay in Chaplin's earliest films, stealing the show as the landlady and her husband's obnoxious son. It's easy to see why Chaplin kept casting him in his films!

Charlie Chaplin was still working out the kinks in his Little Tramp character with this rather tame comedy of errors. This one generated barely a chuckle from me, perhaps due to the lack of chemistry between Chaplin and his so-called leading lady in this film, playing a landlady whom everyone thinks Charlie is in love with.

Perhaps had Mabel Normand been given the role of the landlady, there might have been a bit more spark. Certainly Chaplin's later leading lady, Edna Purviance, would have been perfect in the role. But such as not to be.

There are a few funny moments, such as when Charlie bats a tennis ball out of sight (reflecting perhaps the real-life Chaplin's growing interest in the sport?), and a pointless though funny sequence in which Charlie raids a fridge and gets drunk.

The best and funniest sequence comes near the end when the landlady's son, who secretly photographed the comedies of errors between his mom, his dad, and Charlie, puts on a special "parents gone wild" slide show and the usual Keystone mayhem ensues. The boy, incidentally, is played by Gordon Griffith, who appeared in a number of Chaplin's Keystone comedies before making a name for himself as Tarzan's son.

The Star Boarder falls somewhere in the middle ground of Chaplin's Keystone comedies. There's enough humor to hold one's interest, but it can't be considered one of his better works.

This is one of Mack Sennett's farcical comedies which causes hearty laughter all through the action. It is certainly rapid-fire and has been well photographed. - The Moving Picture World, April 18, 1914

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.

He did do better than 'The Star Boarder', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'The Star Boarder' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'The Star Boarder' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'The Star Boarder' is not bad at all.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Not one of his most likeable characters though.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'The Star Boarder' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. The tennis ball and raiding the fridge scenes are the funniest parts.

Overall, far from one of Chaplin's best but pretty good and perhaps one of his better efforts from the early Keystone period. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This is Chaplin's 10th film and the fourth and last one that George Nichols directed. Only Mack Sennett directed Chaplin in more movies.

This is also the fourth film where he appears drunk ("Mable's Strange Predicament," "Tango, Tangled," and "His Favorite Pasttime" are the other three). It is the third film that he has Minta Durfee as a love interest ("Making a Living," and Cruel, Cruel Love) and the third film he fights with an enraged Edgar Kennedy ("A Film Johnie" and "Cruel, Cruel Love"). Both Durfee and Kennedy are excellent in their roles.

This is the first film in which Chaplin holds a pie. What is interesting is that nobody gets hit by the pie. Instead Chaplin just sits on it. This indicates that pie throwing in March of 1914 had not yet become a standard device in silent film comedies.

The film does not go for big laughs, but it does have a steady stream of small ones. Especially good is Gordon Griffith as a boy with a big, hysterical laugh who snaps naughty pictures of Durfee and Kennedy with different partners.

The film sets up some nice characters in a rooming house, but it does not go any where. It it is pleasantly more restrained and gentler than most Keystone Films. There is, however, the obligatory raucous ending.

Chaplin had done ten films in about ten weeks at Keystone at this point in time. He would take a small break and the following month come back with the two-reeler "Mable At The Wheel."