Buster millionnaire

One of the hardest things about watching the talkies MGM stuck Buster Keaton in isn't necessarily how awful they are (although Free and Easy (1930) IS awful), but how underwhelming they are. Gone are Keaton's outrageous stunts and understated sense of humor. In their place are set-bound scripts with uninspired slapstick and half-wit jokes. This precisely defines Sidewalks of New York (1932), perhaps the most boring of all the Keaton MGM films.

Keaton, Cliff Edwards, and Anita Page are all wasted on insipid material. I feel especially bad for Page, who's stuck screaming half the time. Buster has little to do other than look foolish in the most unfunny ways possible, though at least his character isn't nearly as idiotic as he was in Free and Easy. The only decent bit he got was a scene where he tries and fails to carve a roasted duck. Oh well, at least Durante isn't running about the set screeching, else this would be downright painful.

I have great respect for the early movie comedians like Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and others who created a character and developed situations and gags that fit the character's personality. They all had great autonomy within their own smaller companies, but found free reign disappear when they moved to the majors. "Sidewalks" is an MGM comedy with Buster Keaton; it's not a Buster Keaton comedy. It isn't bad, but other, even lesser comedians could have done as well because the "Buster" character doesn't appear here. Although some of the dialog is good and Keaton delivers it well, there's too much; he has an inner city gym for physical gags, but there's too little. The big studios never understood that comedians like Keaton, and later Laurel and Hardy, were their own writers, directors, and gag men. "Sidewalks" has much to recommend it, including some good support, but if you're looking for "Buster", or even "Elmer", look elsewhere.

This is another sad example of what happened to the outstanding Buster Keaton when he became controlled by a supposedly "major" studio, but one that had next to no idea of how to make a Buster Keaton movie.

With all the money and facilities available, this movie is not one-one-hundredth the quality of, for example, "The General." Buster Keaton, though, still showed some of the athleticism that make his good movies so good, and co-star Anita Page showed that she is watchable even in horrible movies.

For Keaton, it's a different kind of script, too, in that Buster is a rich guy and has money to try to do good.

Actually, most of the players do pretty well with what they have to work with, and it's a lot better than, for example, "Free and Easy," but "Sidewalks" is probably a title nobody will want to see more than once ... or maybe, since it is Keaton, more than once a year.

This is added after a viewing on TCM, 7 January 2015: Despite my dismal outlook in the previous review, this time around I liked it a lot more.

Partly I liked it more because I paid more attention to Anita Page, who had, I think, a role quite different for her. And she scored.

In previous roles -- that I have seen -- she was just a very pretty girl with no particular strength. Here she was strong as an over-protective sister "and mother and father."

Cliff Edwards was a particular joy. Usually just a with or at best second fiddle, here he showed he too could be a strong character, and his pairing with the acrobatic Keaton was perfect.

Yes, the big studio did not understand what was funny and did not know how to present Keaton.

But my second viewing, contrary to my earlier comment, made me like this a lot more and I raised my rating to seven. And I think everyone ought to see it. At least twice.

Maybe this isn't the worst movie Buster Keaton ever appeared in, but in my opinion it sure felt like a long, long way to spend 74 minutes, and I regret to say that the 'The End' title came as something of a relief. Buster was a truly great comedian, but watching this film is no way to appreciate his talent, especially if you've never seen his best work from the silent days. Viewers unfamiliar with the details of his career should know right off that Keaton made this movie (and his other early talkies) during an unhappy stint at MGM, where he was denied creative control of his material and forced to take ill-fitting assignments. Sidewalks of New York is a prime example from a generally dismal series. Recently I was sorry to find a VHS copy of the film on the shelf with other videos at a local library, and to make matters worse they didn't appear to have any of Keaton's other, better movies, just this one. Wherever he is, Buster is grimacing.

What's wrong with it? Well, where to start? The dialog is generally labored and witless, but feels even worse because this is an early talkie with no musical score whatsoever, so the actors exchange their clunky jokes accompanied only by the low hiss of the soundtrack. Next problem, the casting is off. Buster has been assigned the role of Homer Van Dine Harmon, a dim-witted product of Old Money. This sort of part suited him in silent movies due to his elegant appearance, but it feels all wrong in a talkie because, let's face it, the man didn't speak in the cultivated tones of a moneyed person sent to the finest schools. (I'm trying to phrase this delicately.) Buster Keaton was a brilliant comic artist but he was not well educated, at least not in the conventional sense. He grew up backstage and learned all about show business, not subjects they teach at Harvard. His voice was harsh and his grammar was poor, and he tended to impose his own phrasing on the dialog he was given, so he'd say things like "That don't feel good." He doesn't sound like a child of privilege, and when he's given such bogus things to say as "You strike me as a trifle unbalanced," as in this film, he sounds even less so. Furthermore, Homer's dimness lacks the distinctive eccentricity Buster displayed in his best silent comedies: he's merely stupid. Worse still, MGM has placed Buster's annoyingly dim-witted millionaire in the middle of a sentimentalized Lower East Side slum, full of picturesque Little Tough Guys with nicknames like Baloney. The real-world euphemism for "Baloney" sums up this script succinctly.

The plot hinges on Homer's attempts to clean up the slum and provide the kids with wholesome activities; his primary motivation is to impress Margie (Anita Page), the older sister of one of the boys. The Hollywood ghetto feels phony, and the script's version of snappy dialog is painful at times, but even so this premise might have offered the potential for decent visual comedy if those genuinely dim-witted millionaires who ran MGM had allowed their star to develop some of his characteristic set-pieces. But no, this project has the look of something cranked out in a hurry, and the exquisitely funny routines we remember from Keaton's silent features have been reduced to mercilessly repetitive bits in which Buster gets punched, trips, flails, drops things, clunks his head, breaks more stuff, and falls over again.

Even Keaton's weakest comedies usually have a scene or two worth seeing. (Perhaps the only exception is the abysmal feature he made in Mexico in the mid-1940s: all prints of that one should be seized with fireplace tongs and tossed into a raging furnace.) Sidewalks of New York provides a moment or two, but the pickings are pretty slim. There's a modestly funny sequence in which Buster attempts to carve a roast duck, and another in which he and Cliff Edwards mess up an amateur stage performance, but any comedian worthy of the name could have performed these scenes. Keaton's MGM bosses just couldn't figure out what made him unique, or else they just didn't care. On balance, there's no compelling reason to see this movie, and I'd suggest that the 74 minutes it takes to view it could be more profitably and enjoyably spent watching any of Buster's silent features.

I just finished watching "Sidewalks of New York" (1931) with Buster Keaton as the somewhat dim-witted but rich slumlord Homer Van Dine Harmon. Homer decides to help the youth of his street by building a youth recreational gym. They don't appreciate it & do a job on it by tearing it apart.

Anita Page plays Margie Kelly the woman whom Homer adores but doesn't think he has a prayer of a chance in gaining her interest. His buddy Poggle (Cliff Edwards...voice of Jiminy Cricket fame) encourages him to try to get to know her & ask her to marry him.

Norman Phillips as Clipper Kelly (Margie's brother) is one of a few of the troubled youth Homer wants to help.

And we have Frank Rowan who plays the nasty Butch the Bad Guy. Butch will do all he can to stop Homer from helping the kids because that group is where he collects his new gang members.

What's going to happen? Will Butch's plan to kill Homer come to fruition? Or will the kids decide Homer is A-OK & come to his rescue? I hope you get to watch this comedy.

Keaton wasn't fond of this movie but I found it to be fun!