O Aeronauta

This is the only short feature of Buster Keaton's I have seen, it is funnier than I thought, what with the bear chases and the hot air baloon. However, it didn't seem as sophisticated, clever or as funny as "The General" or "Our Hospitality", it was lacking the usual clever, knowing edge of silent films e.g. Sunrise, The Kid. Which has now been replaced by CGI. Saying ll that, some of the stunts in it are extremely cool and really funny, perhaps the best introduction to Keaton. It is available on "Seven Chances" and on "Buster Keaton Shorts (Volume 1), along with Convict 22 and other things.

Good, not brilliant, ****/****

This is not one of Buster Keaton's best short features, but it has some good moments. Most of the gags are of good quality, and most of the sequences work well enough. The main thing it really lacks is that, unlike most of Buster's movies, it never really builds on itself or gets much momentum. In his best features, the setting and story help make the decent gags very funny and the good gags hilarious.

Buster becomes "The Balloonatic" when he is trying to help a balloonist prepare his craft, and it accidentally takes off with Buster on top of the balloon. He winds up in the wilderness, where he and a young woman that he meets (Phyllis Haver) have to fend for themselves.

Although this one doesn't fit together quite as well as his best comedies, being mostly a series of only loosely-connected gags, some of them are very good in themselves. If nothing else, it has enough that it should probably be of interest at least to those who are already Keaton fans.

Here, Buster Keaton accidentally gets on top of a hot-air balloon. When he shoots himself out of the sky, he lands near a stream filled with fish. Also, there is a young woman camping nearby. Funny scenes follow, which contain, among other things, bears, burning canoes, and waterfalls. See this film because it is yet another one that displays Keaton's mechanical ingenuity. Surely, you will also find it quite humorous.

Actually, there are only a few minutes of Buster Keaton and the big hot-air balloon in this 22-minute movie. Most of it is Buster and Phyllis Haver out in country, separately, canoeing and having adventures fishing and hunting. In the end, they get together for a few scenes including a "cute" ending with some waterfalls.

Overall, it's okay but nothing hilarious. Most of the gags are very loosely connected, but that's not unusual for a short silent comedy film. Buster provides most of the laughs but Haver, a new female face not seen by me before in a Keaton film, is not a bad comedienne.

I watched this right after a much faster-paced Keaton short ("Neighbors") so this looked a little slow in comparison.

It is not exactly the comedy who you expect. It is not the portrait of "baloonatic" defined by title. But a sweet story about a young man across different forms of adventure, victim of events, having as end of the long trip the love story as crown of efforts to be happy. Special for the simplicity with nostalgic flavor, it is just the window to a lost world of film.