Keaton on the Case
- Review By:
- PoseyDozer
- Date:
- January 25, 2009
- Movie:
- Sherlock Jr.
- Director:
- Buster Keaton
- Released:
- 1924
- Good Guy:
- The Projectionist
- Played By:
- Buster Keaton
- Bad Guy:
- The Boyfriend
- Played By:
- MPAA Rating:
- NR
- Family Friendly Ages:
- Everyone
Never mind the inter-titles. All eyes are on Buster Keaton as he — how do you describe that walk? A purposeful, clipped waddle? — strides and bumbles through this charming comedy from the silent era. In Sherlock Jr, Keaton the director deftly combines vaudeville tricks and slapstick physical comedy with playful pokes at the then new medium of film. Playing the sincere, innocent inquisitive who never seems to get the joke, you can almost see him turning a roll of film over in his hands and thinking to himself, "What can I do with this?"
Keaton plays an aspiring detective and film projectionist who is rebuffed by his girlfriend when he is wrongly accused of stealing her father's pocket watch. Back at the movie house, Keaton falls asleep in the projection booth and, in his daydream, wanders into the film as a debonair, tuxedoed detective. In the film within the film, the detective rescues the girl, but back in real life, it's the projectionist's girlfriend who solves the case.
Whether he's trying to unstick himself from a sheet of newspaper, or leaping through a window into a woman's dress — how does he do that?!? — or following a suspect inches behind without being seen, Keaton is a delight to watch. Sure, he spends a little too much time on the handle bars of that motor bike and showing us how seamlessly he can manipulate his camera. But all is forgiven when he takes his girl's hand and earnestly peeks at the movie stars canoodling on big screen to figure out what to do next.
