Les tribulations de Fatty

This Keystone ensemble comedy from 1915 owes most of its real comedic value to a fairly realistic -- well, realistic for Keystone -- handling of the situation -- except for the 60-shooters that the House Detective wields. At Keystone bullets never do more than produce a trail of smoke and cause people to jump and clutch their pants; nor are they exhausted until the target is at point-blank range with his arms raised.

Other comments have given a fairly good idea of the plot and story. Despite Arbuckle's star status -- at this point only Chaplin, Normand and Sterling ranked as high in public esteem as he -- he is, as a director, generous. It is amazing to see Edgar Kennedy with a full head of hair, yet clearly Edgar Kennedy in his mannerisms. Only the patented slow burn is missing, but at Keystone, the word 'slow' is not part of the English language.

Very amusing.

For all that "Fatty's Reckless Fling" is mostly unrefined, knockabout slapstick, it has some very good moments and good gags. Roscoe Arbuckle plays the kind of character that he could perform as well as anyone, as a hen-pecked yet mischievous husband. Amidst all of the romping around, there are also a few less obvious gags thrown in.

Arbuckle's character is left alone for the evening by his domineering wife, and he quickly finds action and trouble. Several other characters become part of the confusion, and Arbuckle himself gets plenty to work with, as he joins in a poker game, gets tangled up with the neighbors, and faces the arm of the law. The story builds things up steadily, and once all of the details are tied together, it lets everything go in a manic display of slapstick.

The gag with the hide-a-bed is a good one, and the poker players' ruse to avoid detection is cleverly done. There may not be the depth of Arbuckle's best short movies here, but it is good fun and is entertaining to watch.

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.