Grand Slam Opera (1936)
** (out of 4)
Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton) travels from Arizona to New York where he wants to appear on an amateur-hour talent contest but while in town he also tries to win the heart of a young woman (Diana Lewis) he sees cooking pancakes in a window. These Educational-Keaton pictures were never known for their stories and that's a good thing because there usually wasn't any and that's certainly the case here. It's said that these films were shot on $20,000 budgets and that Keaton pocketed $5,000 of that so it's clear the rest of the money went somewhere other than a screen writer. Pretty much this entire film has Keaton annoying the girl and then finally getting on the radio show where his "talent" is juggling a bottle, which of course doesn't do much for those people listening on a radio. Ha ha. As was the case the majority of the time, this short really doesn't add up to too much in the end, although some might get a kick out of seeing Keaton doing a wide range of tricks. The majority of these comedy bits happen inside a bedroom where Keaton tries to rehears but of course nothing goes right. He tries jumping on a bed and it collapses. He tries to do a trick with a bowling ball and it crashes through the floor. Of course, the girl he loves is in the room below and this just makes her hate him more. Keaton at least gives an energetic performance as he's clearly trying to make something out of nothing. Lewis was pretty bland in her role and Harold Goodwin is also wasted in the role of the band leader who gets into it with Keaton on the air.
