The Battling Kangaroo

This is one of the Fox Films Animal short subjects of the late 1920s. Although few of that Studio's short subjects survive -- even the features are scarce on the ground, thanks to vault fires -- Fox' comedy shorts were among the best in the business thanks to generous budgets sustained by a major theater chain -- they could spend the money because they had the audience, and the audience came because they spent the money.

This one has little-remembered Lige Conley going into a fight to collect money to marry his girl. Then, hooking up with Holloway and George Gray, they get involved in several other schemes to make money fast. There are boxing gags; there's automobile thrill gags and eventually three, count 'em, three kangaroos, one of which is mistaken for a child's pet rabbit.

The pacing is pretty the same as one of Christie's shorts, with a skeletal plot and then it's set-up, pay-off, set-up, pay-off. Unhappily, while no expense is spared to produce good gags, there's little here that the silent comedy fan hasn't seen before But it's certainly nice to see what could be done when no one was pinching pennies