A Ten-Minute Egg

Ten-Minute Egg, A (1924)

*** (out of 4)

A step in the right direction for the Jimmy Jump series with Charley Chase. This time out Jimmy plays yet another coward but he finds a trick in giving people a fake card stating that he's the bouncer at the "Barrel of Blood Cafe". This here scares people out of wanting to fight him but soon the woman he's about to marry gets taken by a con man. This here turned out to be one of the better entries in the series as we get Chase turning in a good performance and the story itself isn't too bad even if it's not ground breaking. What works best here is once again Chase and his coward performance. He was always great at playing this type of character and he brings a lot of charm to the film as well as laughs when he's playing "tough" just because of this fake card. Jimmy gets himself into several situations of trying to fight people and the single joke works in each case. The end of the film turns into something we'd expect to see from Harold Lloyd as there are stunts dealing with Chase hanging over a cliff and another nice one where he must jump from a motorcycle onto the back of a truck.