Life in Sometown, U.S.A.

Life in Sometown, U.S.A. (1938)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Buster Keaton directed this short, which has a couple rich women going into court and being disgraced when a cop pays the $2 fine for a poor kid who broke her window. The judge decides to prove a point that there are many laws on the books that they could charge people with but don't. Over the next few days the rich people are shown what they do that is actually against the law. Carey Wilson does the narration for this short but it really doesn't matter because the end result is quite poor and ranks among the worst shorts I've seen from MGM. This thing isn't horrible but at the same time the movie drags at such a slow pace that its 10-minute running time seems twice that. The biggest problem is that the stories simply aren't that interesting. Most of these Wilson shorts (or even Pete Smith) move at a nice pace and contain some nice information but that's simply not the case here. The stories about all these strange laws are mildly interesting but Keaton simply doesn't add any entertainment to them.