Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Al St. John (who were respectively uncle and nephew in real life) play two rivals in this in this one-reeler film for the affection of their sweetheart (played by actress Mabel Normand). In the beginning of the film, Mabel is at home and she sees Arbuckle on the fence and goes outside to meet him. They both hug and start talking. After a short time they start arguing but soon reconcile. Mabel’s father sees her talking to Arbuckle, gets furious and goes outside carrying a gun. The father does not actually shoot, but ends up literally kicking Arbuckle out and prohibiting Mabel to ever talk to him again. Right afterwards Arbuckle uses a slingshot to take revenge on Mabel’s father, who wastes no time to shoot back on Arbuckle’s butt. Mabel protests, to no avail.
Then an intertitle announces Mr. Reddy (played by Al St John), another suitor of Mabel, who arrives on horseback. He was very much interested in Mabel, but it was unrequited Mabel because she does not feel the same. Arbuckle sees Mr. Reddy around his girl and gets disgusted and, to make things worse, Mr. Reddy tries to kiss Mabel without her consent. Something has to be done and Arbuckle immediately separated Mabel from the unwanted advances of the other suit. She rewarded the kindness by kissing Arbuckle, who was the man she really loved. Both man start to fight and Mabel takes some distance in fear but it was such big chaos that she ended up being accidentally hit anyway.
Arbuckle retaliates by throwing bricks on his opponent. The situation escalates when a brick is throw towards the house, crosses the window and ends up hitting Mabel’s father by accident. As he was still holding his gun, the gun was also inadvertently shot, which scared all other family members who were at home and unaware of the situation. Mabel’s father got furious again and threw water out of the window and wet somebody else by the mistake. Meanwhile, the fighting between both suitors of Mabel was still going on outside. Mr. Reddy sits on a water well, but Arbuckle hit him with a brick, which made Mr. Reddy falling inside the well. Arbuckle and Mabel try to rescue Mr. Reddy, who was drowning.
Mabel returns home to ask for help and returns with some of her male relatives. In the middle of all mess, Mabel’s mother calls the Sheriff’s Office. The other policemen in the office were sleeping and the sheriff had to wake them up by shooting his own gun to the air. Then the incompetent Keystone Cops come to the rescue. Mr. Reddy is finally rescued and Arbuckle and Mabel try to go away in the middle of confusion, but her relatives realize it and they are chased by everyone – even the Keystone Cops. Fortunately traffic jams were not really a problem back to the 1910s. After this chaotic chase, Mabel and Arbuckle get to arrive in a house, where they meet a clergyman and get married. Much to Mabel’s family annoyance, it was too late to prevent anything and they were already officially married.
Despite having an extremely simple plot, this film is still entertaining with gags easy to understand and as a historical witness of the lifestyle of such long time ago, especially clothing, urbanization and different pace of family life. It is a film to sit down and watching, without questioning any absurdity that the audiences might seem on screen and we all frequently need a film to make us forget about day-to-day problems and just laugh. Recommended cute little film.
No comments:
Post a Comment