Young Oldfield

The film begins with Jimmy Jump (Charley Chase) in an auto race. And, inexplicably, he wins--beating out the great Barney Oldfield in the process (while forgotten today, Oldfield was like the Mario Andretti or Dale Earnhart of his day). However, soon he awakens and it turns out this is all a dream--an elaborately staged dream by the way! When he awakens, he learns from his mother that the rent MUST be paid today by noon but they are $8 short (wow, talk about a contrived plot!). So, clever Jimmy comes up with a variety of ways for their drug store to make a bunch of quick sales. But it looks as if it's all for naught--and the nasty landlord comes to gloat that soon the place will be his. However, Jimmy's love of fast driving comes into play and this results in a final portion of the film that is very reminiscent of a Mack Sennett chase comedy, as Charley drives a race car like a maniac to save the day.

This is a decent comedy. I loved the initial dream sequence. It was handled well and gave me a chuckle. However, making he comedy like a Keystone one with the car stunts wasn't especially welcome. Some of the scenes were pretty poorly done (like car stunts would have been faked a decade earlier) and Chase's style is totally wasted on this sort of comedy. Plus, throwing in the cheap black-face gag wasn't exactly funny either--then or now. All in all, a decent comedy but Chase was capable of so much better--and so much subtler comedy.

By the way, the chubby kid sitting outside the store is Joe Cobb--one of the original Our Gang kids. He doesn't have a lot to do--but it's clearly him.