Court House Crooks

Now this one is really fun! The District Attorney (Ford Sterling) is having an affair with the Judge's wife (Minta Durfee). This entertaining story is full of twists, turns, and close shaves and is almost a bedroom farce. The actors are up for the occasion as all principals play their parts well. There are also some hilarious sight gags such as Ford's walking on a clothesline tightrope style. There are more! Quality acting and funny sight gags ensure a whopping good time watching this film.

The plot to this Keystone comedy is a little more complicated and complex than usual. Instead of people kicking each other in the butt or bonking each other on the head, this one has a plot that is timeless. The District Attorney (Ford Sterling) is fooling around with a judge's wife (Minta Durfee). However, an innocent young man (Harold Lloyd) just happens to walk into the middle of this. He has no idea WHAT is going on and is assumed by the Judge to be a criminal. Can the innocent man somehow extricate himself or will be go to prison for the DA's actions?

The film is not full of huge laughs but funny situations instead. It is fun, entertaining and much more interesting than usual. The only problem I saw, and it's a minor one, is that the message flashed on the mirror was BACKWARDS--or at least it should have been. Think about it....

Only 10-15% of films from the silent era are still around. Why did this have to be one of them?

Mack Sennett's Keystone Films were known for slapstick. This film is a good example of the over the top acting and overtly unfunny nature of the films coming out of that studio. In what is perhaps the worst acting on film, Director/Lead Actor Ford Sterling tries to carry his performance throughout the entire film by jutting out his lower jaw and moving his mouth up and down as though he were channeling a drunken Muppeteer. "Gosh, my performance will be even funnier if I roll my eyes and throw my arms up every 22 seconds. MAKEUP! Make my hair go even higher!" Not even the addition of a young Harold Lloyd (in one of his 28 film appearances of 1915!) can save this film.

If you love silent film comedies, don't watch this one. It might just change your mind.

For Mack Sennett, this short is fairly subdued; even the film's Kops are subdued, performing in a near "professional" manner nearly befitting real cops!

All in all a pleasant enough outing featuring Sterling's standard mugging. The relatively complex story wraps up with a typically simplistic Sennett ending.

This is Sennett on qualudes, a somewhat diverting change of pace for Keystone.

Court House Crooks (1915)

** (out of 4)

Another Keystone comedy with plenty of plot but very little comedy. The local Judge (Charles Arling) goes and buys a necklace for his wife (Minta Durfee) but he loses it on the way home. It just happens to be found by the District Attorney (Ford Sterling) who decides to give it to his girlfriend who just happens to be the Judge's wife. An innocent man (Harold Lloyd) eventually gets charged with the crime and sure enough he's up against the Judge and the D.A.. COURT HOUSE CROOKS features a very good cast and they help keep the film mildly entertaining but at nearly 23-minutes and no laughs, watching this really shouldn't be a priority for anyone. The biggest problem is clearly that there's just way too much plot and not enough laughs come from it. I mean, just check out the sequence where Lloyd is in his house not certain why the cops are after him. He basically just goes into different rooms, looks at the camera and does nothing else. This long sequence doesn't even attempt to do anything funny. These type of things happen throughout the film and without any laughs you really can't say a comedy works.