One of the Family

One of the Family (1924)

** (out of 4)

The second film in Hal Roach's Jimmy Jump series finds the young man getting a job as a chauffeur but not realizing he's basically been hired to make a woman's husband jealous. Charley Chase as Jimmy is in fine form but the screenplay here really lets him down because there's really not much of anything going on. I think the biggest problem is that it seems the entire running time is trying to set you up for the final minute. This is a problem for a couple reasons and the first is that the build up contains no laughs. The only problem is that the pay off at the end isn't funny either. What we basically have are a few scenes with Jimmy getting in trouble with the husband but none of them work in terms of laughs. Another fine example of some lazy writing is during a dinner scene where Jimmy is invited to by a girl (Blanche Mehaffey) he likes. The entire scene is built around her relatives being slobs and we once again get no laughs. I think what keeps the 10-minute short going is the obvious chemistry between Chase and Mehaffey.