The Rounders

There isn't much more to this silent short than people decking each other and acting drunk, but comedy pioneers Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle do it pretty creatively, and Phyllis Allen and Minta Durfree (Fatty's real-life wife) are pretty good themselves. You'll have to set aside the fact that domestic violence (in both directions) is part of the humor, and a brief appearance of a doorman in blackface, but these didn't stop me from enjoying it. There were a couple moments that made me chuckle, including one where Fatty quietly pulls a tablecloth over him in a crowded dining room as if he's going to bed while Charlie hams it up. It's silly material but the way they controlled their bodies and executed the physical humor was clever. Worth 13 minutes for sure.

Chas. Chapman and the Fat Boy appear in this as a couple of genial jags. The humor is not of an offensive sort, though few performers can avoid this in such scenes. The angry wives follow them and they take to a boat in the lake, which is swamped in an amusing manner. - The Moving Picture World, September 19, 1914

Most Keystones do not age well. Comedy tastes have changed over 90 years, and the hyper-speed frantic randomness of the early Keystones tend to leave the viewer wondering what was supposed to be funny. And frequently, plots are both too complicated and stereotyped.

This one is different. There ain't no plot. All that happens is that Chaplin and Arbuckle, roaringly drunk, annoy their wives, patrons of a restaurant, and eventually the entire civilized world (which seems to have found its way to Griffith Park in LA.) Charlie Chapin and Fatty Arbuckle are very, very funny drunks. They just have the routine down. Chaplin's drunken behavior around his wife is hilarious, because he knows how to make inanimate objects do all the wrong things, and he knows how to pitch his body in all sorts of wrong angles. Arbuckle is not the comedian that Chaplin is, but he keeps up, particularly when he and Chaplin start to demolish a posh restaurant.

The key to this short is pacing. Chaplin and Arbuckle do not spaz out in the typical Keystone way, to assure everyone what hysterical fellows they are. They just move according to their own looped logic, and let the application of that logic be the humor.

The ending, by the way, can be taken as a bit of a cosmic statement -- and is that rare thing in a short comedy -- the perfect closing gag.

Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle play two drunken gentlemen. They are neighbors and they return to disapproving wives.

It's a 16 minute short with two famous silent era stars. The concept is simple. It's easy fun. It's very basic. It may be better to get even more basic by staying in the hotel rooms. I would have liked the guys passing out in the hallway and the wives walk out on them.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'The Rounders', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'The Rounders' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'The Rounders' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The episodic story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy, occasionally repetitive and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'The Rounders' is not bad at all, pretty good actually.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with shades of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Fatty Arbuckle is also great and their chemistry carries 'The Rounders' to very entertaining effect.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'The Rounders' is still very amusing, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

To conclude, decent. 7/10 Bethany Cox