Rampant shenanigans in a respectable hotel
In this brief but amusing Keystone farce our leading man, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, is quite the naughty boy. The story is set in a residential hotel where Roscoe lives with his domineering wife. He enters the lobby tipsy, and there's a bit of slapstick foolery with the hotel manager just to kick things off, but the heart of the matter is the battle of wills between man and wife, i.e. Roscoe's struggle to do whatever he pleases and his wife's struggle to suppress him. When she locks him in their room before stepping out we're treated to a dramatic close-up of her face, in profile, as she turns the key in the lock, and it suggests the kind of close-ups we usually get in murder mysteries or even horror movies. Clearly this woman is formidable, and there will be hell to pay if Roscoe slips out while she's gone.
Needless to say, he slips out easily and promptly joins the poker game across the hall. The best gag in the film comes when Roscoe knocks at the door and the players immediately hide their cards & chips, pull a lever or two, and-- Presto --the sinful poker game is transformed into a Temperance meeting! Perhaps it goes without saying that, just as Roscoe wins the pot and is raking in his chips, a detective appears and attempts to bust the gamblers. The others flee leaving Roscoe holding the bag, as it were. One thing leads to another and before you know it our boy is dodging bullets in his striped boxer shorts. Now he's locked out of his room, the room he was so eager to escape from so recently. He is given refuge by the wife of neighbor Edgar Kennedy, but Mr. Kennedy returns home just as Roscoe's wife returns home. The spouses jump to the obvious conclusions, and things get pretty frenzied. The rousing finale involves an odd sort of Murphy bed that slides back and forth between the two apartments, occupied by various personnel on each trip.
Okay, so this ain't Shakespeare (more like Feydeau, actually) but it's quite a fun little movie, a nice example of Keystone comedy during the studio's heyday and of the sort of film that made Roscoe Arbuckle one of the top film comics of his day, second only to Chaplin in popularity.
Needless to say, he slips out easily and promptly joins the poker game across the hall. The best gag in the film comes when Roscoe knocks at the door and the players immediately hide their cards & chips, pull a lever or two, and-- Presto --the sinful poker game is transformed into a Temperance meeting! Perhaps it goes without saying that, just as Roscoe wins the pot and is raking in his chips, a detective appears and attempts to bust the gamblers. The others flee leaving Roscoe holding the bag, as it were. One thing leads to another and before you know it our boy is dodging bullets in his striped boxer shorts. Now he's locked out of his room, the room he was so eager to escape from so recently. He is given refuge by the wife of neighbor Edgar Kennedy, but Mr. Kennedy returns home just as Roscoe's wife returns home. The spouses jump to the obvious conclusions, and things get pretty frenzied. The rousing finale involves an odd sort of Murphy bed that slides back and forth between the two apartments, occupied by various personnel on each trip.
Okay, so this ain't Shakespeare (more like Feydeau, actually) but it's quite a fun little movie, a nice example of Keystone comedy during the studio's heyday and of the sort of film that made Roscoe Arbuckle one of the top film comics of his day, second only to Chaplin in popularity.
- wmorrow59
- Apr 26, 2005