Early in his stage career Stan Laurel worked as an understudy to Charlie Chaplin, and a strong Chaplin influence is obvious in several of Stan's solo appearances. Just Rambling Along is one of his earliest surviving works, a lightweight, modest one-reel comedy that offers only a hint of the great clown Laurel would become -- and more than a hint of Chaplin. Stan certainly looks odd here: his hair is plastered down flat, and dark makeup is smeared around his pale blue eyes in order to accentuate them, but this only makes them look paler. Frankly, he looks eerie. Stan's screen character isn't very appealing, either. He's a layabout who takes a coin from a small boy, steals food, etc., like the early Chaplin of the Keystone comedies.
Stan is more of a ladies' man in these early films, but also something of a "masher," following any pretty girl he sees and throwing himself at her. In this film as in the later short A Man About Town, some of the humor comes from Stan's efforts to chase after the girl and the girl's efforts to rid herself of him. On this occasion they wind up in a cafeteria, which provides Stan with opportunities for comic business using food, table implements, etc. The gags seem random, as if improvised while the cameras were grinding. Stan borrows Chaplin's bit from the restaurant scene in The Immigrant, using salt & pepper shakers as binoculars, but when Charlie performed the gag it felt appropriate (he was making fun of Henry Bergman's florid gestures) whereas here it just feels forced; Stan's doing it because he needs to do something funny. It's better, and funnier, when Stan samples almost all the food on offer, but orders only a cup of coffee. Just Rambling Along is of modest interest for silent comedy buffs, but serves primarily as evidence that Stan needed the partnership with Oliver Hardy to fully come into his own.
Casting notes: according to one reference source the cook behind the counter is Charley Chase, but I'm inclined to believe it's Charley's look-alike brother James Parrott, sometimes known as Paul Parrott, who later starred in his own solo series of short comedies and eventually directed some of Laurel & Hardy's best films. The big cop who chases after Stan is Noah Young, who was featured in a number of Harold Lloyd shorts and features, while the chef is played by Bud Jamison, a rotund character actor who played in support of every major comedian of the era: everyone from Chaplin, Langdon and Keaton to the Three Stooges. Stan and Bud have a nice scene together in this film, and at one point Stan appears to break character and laugh at something Bud has said. I wish we knew what it was!
