The Big Shot

Snub Pollard and another heavy comic are reporters with an assignment to photograph a reclusive Scotsman. Snub dresses in a kilt (which blows up in the wind, a la Marilyn Monroe) and works with a camera with many peculiar moving parts. Nevertheless, they don't get the shot.

This is a pretty so so picture -- many, many many jokes. But the only ones that manage to be funny are the ones that are totally off color (the kilt jokes, and this oddly phallic picture lens). The pratfalls and other stuff is nothing more than a time passer. This, I suspect is a pretty good example of silent comedy not made by Lloyd, Chaplin, Keaton, Mack Sennett, or Hal Roach. It's just not terribly distinctive.

This is one of four Snub Pollard comedies on the DVD "Weiss-O-Rama"--a collection of shorts made by the Weiss Brothers studio in the 1920s. While the quality of the DVD prints are generally exceptional, the humor isn't. It was as if they had no idea how to do comedy--a serious problem, since they specialized in this genre!

Here, Snub and his occasional partner at Weiss, Marvin Loback ("Fat"--nice nickname, huh?) are sent to get a photograph of some Scotsman for their newspaper. Why this guy is important or newsworthy is never explained. The biggest laughs concern Snub in a kilt and the scene where it's ripped off--revealing that he had very nice legs. However, if this is the best the film has to offer, then you can assume correctly that the film just isn't particularly funny or inspired. Overall, a rather ordinary film with little to recommend it.