His Favorite Pastime

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

Everybody has to have at least one misfire in their careers, even the best directors and actors have not so good films or films they regret. From his early still evolving period before he properly found his stride and fairly fresh from his vaudeville background, 'His Favourite Pastime' shows that Chaplin is not immune from this. While an important milestone period for him, his Keystone years/films were watchable and interesting enough overall but patchy, none being among his best work.

'His Favourite Pastime' has a few good points. While a little primitive and not exactly audacious, the production values are far from cheap. Fatty Arbuckle does bring some zest to his role.

There are also a few amusing moments, the highlight being Chaplin's saloon toilet door fight which is actually very funny and in a different league to the rest of the material.

Where 'His Favourite Pastime' falls down is that mostly it's not particularly funny. The timing feels limp and there is very little, if any, freshness or originality apart from that aforementioned scene with the saloon toilet door. There is not much charm here and there is not much to be emotionally invested by. The story is flimsy, so much so things feel over-stretched, there are not many Chaplin short films where a short length feels very dull but 'His Favourite Pastime' is one of them.

Found myself uncharacteristically disappointed by Chaplin, which was not expected because generally even in lesser efforts he was one of the better things about them. Here he does not look interested and goes through the motions, there is none of the comedy/directing genius that he is deservedly hailed for. Arbuckle aside, the rest of the cast are not much to write home about.

In conclusion, an early career misfire. 4/10 Bethany Cox

In 1914, Charlie Chaplin began making pictures. These were made for Mack Sennett (also known as "Keystone Studios") and were literally churned out in very rapid succession. The short comedies had very little structure and were completely ad libbed. As a result, the films, though popular in their day, were just awful by today's standards. Many of them bear a strong similarity to home movies featuring obnoxious relatives mugging for the camera. Many others show the characters wander in front of the camera and do pretty much nothing. And, regardless of the outcome, Keystone sent them straight to theaters. My assumption is that all movies at this time must have been pretty bad, as the Keystone films with Chaplin were very successful.

The Charlie Chaplin we know and love today only began to evolve later in Chaplin's career with Keystone. By 1915, he signed a new lucrative contract with Essenay Studios and the films improved dramatically with Chaplin as director. However, at times these films were still very rough and not especially memorable. No, Chaplin as the cute Little Tramp was still evolving. In 1916, when he switched to Mutual Studios, his films once again improved and he became the more recognizable nice guy--in many of the previous films he was just a jerk (either getting drunk a lot, beating up women, provoking fights with innocent people, etc.). The final evolution of his Little Tramp to classic status occurred in the 1920s as a result of his full-length films.

This short featured Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle. Both were major early comedy stars. Unfortunately, neither comedian looked terribly funny or interesting in this short about jealousy. Too bad, as I had hoped for so much more from these stars.

It appears this is unpopular, even compared to other early Chaplins.

I found it funnier and more advanced than a number of Chaplin's films from this period.

It suffers compared to later films of his, of course, because I find these early films are rather primitive. However, several of his films before and after this are less funny and less interesting.

Chaplin's drunk act is excellent throughout. Fatty Arbuckle does a decent performance too. The sequence where Charlie fights with a saloon toilet door is funny and much copied. When he jumps onto a moving vehicle it is well done and interesting,

All in all, not a bad little film.

His Favorite Pastime (1914)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Charles Chaplin plays the town drunk who walks into a local bar and starts throwing them down. Soon he can't walk straight but that doesn't stop him from getting on everyone's nerves. The annoying drunk had been done to death by 1914 and it had been done to death by Chaplin even though this was only his seventh movie. I'm really not sure what Chaplin thought of these films but this one here is pretty darn weak from start to finish with very few laughs. Once again we get to see Chaplin stumble around, pick fights and flirt with women who belong to other men. None of this is funny and what's worse is that it appears Chaplin is just sleepwalking through the film. You certainly can't blame here because I didn't see a single attempt at anything even trying to be funny. Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle has a small role at the start of the film but just stumbles around as another drunk. Even if laughs could come from drunks, this one here features rather mean drunks, which again just isn't funny.

This Charlie Chaplin short was the first I watched on the 2 DVD collection of his courtesy of the Platinum Disc Corporation. In this one, he's the familiar Tramp character who's drunk the whole time so anything he does here is the result of his inebriation. As a result, I actually found most of it funny especially early on when one of the people he encounters is fellow comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle as a fellow bar patron who tries to get his drink without Chaplin looking. Since Arbuckle wasn't yet a star, that's all we see of him though he makes a good impression here. Most of the time, it's just Charlie as he stumbles through missing punches or getting punched, going into someone's house and getting the residents' reactions, or scaring some dark-skinned servants (obviously caricatured by Caucasian humans though not as offensively portrayed since there's no white lips or other stereotypical characteristics). Quite funny for an early effort so on that note, I recommend His Favorite Pastime.