In Chaplin's first film as director, he doesn't come flying out of the gates, instantly showing that he will go on to be a great filmmaker. 20 Minutes of Love is not much different from the films that he made in the months before or after, although it is interesting to see one of the first of his mostly improvised films made in a park with some couples and a police officer and little else. Like so many of his other comedies this one turns into little more than a lot of kicking and punching and throwing the entire cast into a lake, but given the amount of short films almost identical to this one that Chaplin cranked out, it is clear that the audiences at the time were having a blast.
The plot itself is even more difficult to follow than they usually are in Chaplin's early work. It involves Charlie wandering around a park and making ridiculously overt passes at women who are sitting on park benches with their boyfriends or husbands, and then there is a stolen watch thrown into the mix and a subsequent conflict involving who owns it and who stole it. Probably the best moment in the film is when Charlie gives the watch away to a pretty girl and then is so proud that he is just beside himself. Pretty amusing, and a lot of the Tramp's characterization also comes through even in this very early film.
It should be noted that you should not expect to find tiny, forgotten gems of masterpiece comedy by looking at Chaplin's early work, because film was an emerging medium and Chaplin himself was an inexperienced filmmaker from any perspective, but unfortunately 20 Minutes of Love, even though it is Chaplin's first film as director and therefore a film-making landmark, is also clearly the work of someone who had little experience in film-making and was still not sure where his career as a filmmaker would take him.
