The Rough House

Rough House, The (1917)

*** (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle helps run a seaside resort but trouble starts when a deliver boy (Buster Keaton) shows up. It's rather amazing to see how much time the star/director Fatty gave to Keaton who's allowed to steal the show with his physical comedy. Another interesting thing is that there's a dinner scene where Fatty puts forks in two rolls and does a dance, which Chaplin borrowed eight years later in The Gold Rush.

Butcher Boy, The (1917)

** (out of 4)

The butcher boy (Fatty Arbuckle) falls for the store owner's daughter and must fight to get her. The first half of the film takes place in the store and has Buster Keaton playing an obnoxious customer. This half is very funny but the second half dealing with Fatty dressing in drag in order to sneak into a boarding school really doesn't work.

Housekeeping chaos for a well-off homeowner, his small cooking/cleaning staff and a visiting party of refined dinner guests with ulterior motives. As with most slapstick comedies of the day, it only takes a little nudge to transition from a sleepy ho-hum day around the house into a full-blown food fight with smoke in the air and a never-ending parade of head-over-heels pratfalls. This one spirals out of control in a hurry, with Fatty Arbuckle setting the bedroom ablaze before he's had his morning coffee and Buster Keaton flopping flat on his back twice in his first sixty seconds, then snowballs until Arbuckle is gleefully empying a gun into his own kitchen door while Keaton hurls butcher knives at the chef.

Honestly, there's very little to The Rough House beyond sight gags and ever-increasing stakes in a high rollers' game of physical one-upsmanship, but it's a riot when it's in the groove. Arbuckle and Keaton's brands of expressive comedy are compatible and complimentary, and their constant efforts to out-goof each other lead to increasingly rich rewards for the viewer. It doesn't mean much of anything, but it's a hilarious way to kill half an hour.

'The Rough House' that marks the directorial debut of Buster Keaton and is his second collaboration with Fatty Arbuckle, falls flat. The most amusing part is in the beginning of the movie where Arbuckle's character nonchalantly tries to put out a fire with cup of water. From there on the film goes downhill. Repetitive gags of someone getting hit int the face with stuff (I know it is slapstick and pie in the face was widely used gag, but this time they did it too much). Too random, too messy and too noisy (for silent film).

This is a pretty poor film in some ways. First, although Buster Keaton is in the film, he is not given much to do. Instead, Fatty Arbuckle is clearly the star and Keaton and Al St. John are just along for the ride.

The film has a few cute moments, such as the incredibly slow and lazy way that Fatty responds to a fire he accidentally started in the house. But, unfortunately, too much of the film is mindless slapstick--punching, kicking and falling for little apparent reason. While this was very popular in the early days of film, by 1917, this was fortunately becoming passé. Not that the violence and action was bad, but that films in the early days had almost no plot--just action and hitting. This film unfortunately didn't find the right balance--just way too much mindless pratfalls.

This short comedy has some very good moments that make up for other stretches that are more routine. There are also a couple of classic gags worth watching for in themselves. The setting has 'Mr. Rough' (Arbuckle) trying to endure a visit from his mother-in-law, with Keaton and Al St. John on hand to create additional havoc. The two best gags come right at the beginning: watch for Fatty's fire-fighting technique, later imitated by other comedians, and then right after that Fatty improvises a gag that Charlie Chaplin later refined and made into a classic - it's a nice surprise, and worth watching for. And after that, the rest of the film also has some good moments that fans of Arbuckle and Keaton should enjoy.