Buster Keaton Saturday: "The Play House"

1921 short

Rating: n/a

Plot: Buster works as a stagehand for a play house.

"This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show."

Not as uproariously funny as a lot of Keaton's stuff, but this is worth watching for the craftsmanship and invention alone. This is a very fragmented "story," and again, the story is more of an excuse just to showcase the physical and visual humor. The special effects during the first sequence in which Keaton plays multiple roles (stagehands, minstrel performers [including two in blackface], a conductor, every member of the band, audience members, even some women) are great, and if one Buster Keaton is funny, twenty of them are probably even funnier. The second bit in which Keaton plays a monkey is entertaining, and there are some strange and imaginative visual gags when Buster must recruit some acrobatic soldiers (two of them midgets!) to replace the ones who quit. One of those includes two one-armed men collaborating on their clapping in the audience.

In case you're keeping score, Jennifer dozed off and couldn't make it through 2 minutes of this 22 minute short. She's not seen an entire Buster Keaton feature-length or short movie yet.