The way Buster Keaton told it, his first encounter with Roscoe Arbuckle happened by chance on a rainy day in New York in March, 1917. Having recently left his family's act The Three Keatons, he accepted Arbuckle's invitation to come do a scene in The Butcher Boy, and the rest, as they say, is history.
In the first half of the film, we meet Arbuckle, a butcher who is light on his feet and gracefully slides over the countertop, or easily maneuvers around the shop on a mounted wall ladder on wheels. He casually flicks a cut of meat over his back to have it land on a hook, and tosses his knife into the air to have it land embedded into the board. These are the same kinds of things we would see from Keaton in later films. Meanwhile, the shop's dog Luke runs on a giant treadmill to grind pepper, which was a funny contraption, and probably the film's best gag.
It's at the 6:25 mark that Buster shows up, and after sampling some molasses that he's wiped off the bottom of his shoe, decides to buy some. Arbuckle, Keaton, and sticky molasses - you can clearly see that hijinks are coming. Keaton's money gets stuck in the bottom of the bucket, his hat gets stuck on his head, his foot gets stuck on his floor, etc. The butcher has eyes for the shop manager's daughter (Alice Lake), but she's also being pursued by Slim, the store's clerk, and the two of them get into a fight over her, resulting in bags of flour being hurled all over the store, Keaton (naturally) joining in the fray. Gags with sticky goo and food fights have been done countless times over the 106 years since this was made so it's not going to wow anyone today, but it's watchable, and seeing this pair in their earliest scenes together was special.
In the second half of the film, in response to the brawling, the father sends his daughter away to a boarding school where no men are allowed. To get around this rule, Arbuckle dresses up as a girl and meets with the teacher to enroll. Unfortunately, his rival has the same idea, and they end up in the same room with her. The gags that result, including the two men fighting, Arbuckle being spanked by the teacher, and Slim and his accomplices (including Buster) attempting to kidnap the young woman, aren't all that funny, relying more on the novelty at the time of the men in drag than anything else. The teacher wielding a gun and good boy Luke helping Arbuckle get the girl was cute though. Overall, it's certainly not great, but not bad either, and it got bonus points from me for it being Keaton's first film.
