Time Out for Trouble

Charley Chase is engaged to get married and while in the department store, buying his fiancée, he saves the woman from being hit in the head by a heavy box, but his fiancée only sees a picture of Charley published in the newspaper holding the girl round. His angry fiancée breaks off their engagement. The girl is the wife of an infamous gangster who lives in the same apartment building as Charley, and the broken and desperate Charley asks the gangster to drive him away. But he no longer wants to fall for him after his fiancée finds out what really happened and forgives him. Since the gangster is a really honorable guy and believes the contract is a contract, Charley is in his usual dilemma.

While shopping with his fiancé Edith for their wedding cake, Charley saves a mobster's girlfriend from an near-accident. A photographer gets their picture and once the picture hits the papers with a misleading headline, Edith jilts Charley. Having nothing to live for, Charley tried unsuccessfully to bump himself off! When he inadvertently learns that the mobster and his girl live in his building, Charley persuades the mobster to rub him out, albeit without his knowing when it will happen. Edith learns the truth about the photo and makes up with Charley. Now Charley has to let the mobster know that he doesn't want to be rubbed out anymore and the real fun begins!! A funny film from the start to end, with great sight gags and an array of Columbia stock players in bit roles. Another great Del Lord comedy!

There's quite a strain of matter-of-fact black humor running through this Charley Chase short: most of the plot revolves around Charley either trying to commit suicide or evading being murdered, and the humor of it is augmented by how deadpan it is played in this respect; it's presented as if suicide were a perfectly natural course of action for Charley to take, and the short moves along from there.

This is a very funny comedy, and has a somewhat different feel to it than a typical Charley Chase two reeler, though not really to its detriment. Instead of building a mini-farce up slowly and carefully constructing a funny plot, it sets up Charley's sticky situation (caught in a photo that makes him look like he's cheating right before his wedding) rather perfunctorily and randomly, and uses it to move right into an extended and very funny gag sequence (the one featuring Charley's attempts at suicide).

Instead of proceeding from a crazy premise to reasonable developments, this is pretty fast paced and full of crazy plot developments, spurred on by turns of events like Charley's elaborate suicide mechanism accidentally flinging him into the apartment window of the gangster he has just randomly befriended.

This one is also notably well produced and directed, with a very clever and stylish visual opening gag, and a great outdoor tracking shot of the amusing image of Charley walking don the road in a top hat and his underwear. Of Charley Chase's Columbia Pictures shorts this might be a better example of him adhering to a Columbia style rather than purely bringing his own, but he adapts that style to his own strengths as a performer in a very funny way.

Incidentally, there is no boxing in this movie, nor any sporting event at all. I can't quite figure out the title.

"Time Out for Trouble" is one of the dumber comedy shorts that Charley Chase made for Columbia Pictures. The plot occasionally makes no sense at all and it really looks as if the script wasn't quite ready for filming.

When the film begins, Charley saves a woman's life by grabbing her. However, some idiot snapped a picture and ran it in the newspaper-- and makes it look like Charley is a lady-killer--which enrages his fiancée. She breaks it off with him without allowing him to explain at all and he spends the rest of the film trying to kill himself. Later, when she's learned the truth, it might just be too late to stop Charley's criminal friends from killing him...as they want to do him a favor.

As I said above, the plot seems to have some holes. Why wouldn't the fiancée let him explain himself? Why resort to killing yourself? Why capture the people trying to kill you and then run away....which would allow them to eventually catch you and kill you. Duh.