Laughing Gas

This is easily the worst Charlie Chaplin film I have watched till now.

It uses the same style of comedy Charlie later became synonymous with. But it's so poorly made that you can not laugh even if you wish to. It's all about kicking, hitting, throwing bricks and falling over each other which to this day, remain the most overused cliches in slapstick.

The low quality (as obvious for a movie over a hundred years old) doesn't help with smoothning the plotline, which is very thin. The whole film feels rather rushed and overly chaotic due to all the slapstick without any pauses.

Asides from that, the acting is great!

A so-so Chaplin entry where the material is not as good as it should be. The interaction with Chaplin and the pretty dental patient is good, but the film as a whole is crying out for better slapstick. 6 out of 10 stars.

This was another early Charlie Chaplin film that he also directed. Since it's for the Mack Sennett Keystone Studio, expect lots of punching, slapping, and throwing of bricks. In Laughing Gas, The Tramp is a dentist's assistant who sometimes acts like he's his boss. One of the ways he takes advantage of that is when he steals kisses from one of the lovely female patients by using one of those tweezers to pull her face toward his. And she seems to like it! That was one of the funniest scenes for me. There's also a funny fight/chase between him and Mack Swain that causes Swain to go guess where! So on that note, Laughing Gas is recommended and is available on a DVD collection called "American Slapstick".

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'Laughing Gas', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Laughing Gas' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'Laughing Gas' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Laughing Gas' is not bad at all.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Laughing Gas' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, pretty decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox