The Rounders (1914) User Reviews

Charlie and Roscoe do Laurel & Hardy (or so it may seem, at least)

[sno-smari-m · 6/10 · 7 August 2005]

By the late summer of 1914, Chaplin's confidence as a film director and performer seemed to be well established. Though still a newcomer in the medium, he had developed a sharp understanding of the essential mechanics of motion pictures remarkably fast. His films were never below the average Keystone-standard as far as I'm concerned, and some are easily among the funniest things produced at the company during this period, THE ROUNDERS being a good example. It's strict "drunken act comedy," with obvious borrowings from Chaplin's years in the music halls, but does not feel like a filmed stage routine; certain bits could only have worked well on film.

Neighbors and pals Charlie and Roscoe (of "Fatty Arbuckle"-fame) arrive home in drunken condition, leading to heavy arguments with their respective wives. They soon hurry out again, and decide to stay over at the local bar for the night. They are hastily thrown out of the bar as well, however, and as their wives have begun a search for their husbands, our heroes seek peace in a row-boat at a nearby lake. There, they fall asleep while the boat sinks; whether they ever wake up again remains unconfirmed. Through this very simple and much-used premise, Chaplin and Arbuckle manage to come up with many funny bits; Roscoe using a cloth as his feather-bed while trying to get asleep at the bar is one highlight. The two work perfectly as a comedy team, and only the absence of well-defined personalities (they are both quite vulgar and drunk) makes a comparison with Laurel & Hardy a bit far-fetched.

Years later, Roscoe Arbuckle is reported to have said that he regretted to not have appeared in more films with Chaplin than these loud and fast Keystone-films. Even so, the two did turn out together at least one of the funnier films Chaplin appeared in during that single year of 1914. Not a masterpiece, quite loud and somewhat vulgar, but pretty amusing. (This review has later been somewhat revised and updated, Dec. 2012)

Charlie and Fatty find friendship with alcohol and mutual disdain for wives

[OldAle1 · 7/10 · 16 January 2009]

Like all of the very early Chaplin works on this VHS, the quality is rather poor and there are dropouts -- not from the tape, but from the film elements -- sometimes enough so that the action is hard to follow. Not that it matters a whole lot, as these are for the most part very simple films with lots of knockabout action, broad humor, and very little else. This short with the previous "Masquerader" is a little bit more imaginative and interesting than the first three.

"The Rounders" again features Fatty Arbuckle; this time Charlie and Fatty are neighbors in a cheap apartment building, each with wife trouble: Fatty beats up his wife, while Charlie gets beaten by his. They make enough racket that their wives get angry and send them next door to shut up the other neighbor, but after a little bit of knockabout Charlie and Fatty decide instead to split some booze and go off to a fancy restaurant, where after more mischief they are kicked out, only to go off in a leaky rowboat together, apparently drowning at the finish! Just about as good as the previous short, "The Masquerader", quite solid and re-watchable.

Chaplin And Fatty Arbuckle As Drunks

[CitizenCaine · 5/10 · 29 June 2008]

Chaplin again teams up with Fatty Arbuckle as drunks who argue with their wives in separate hotel rooms. The two comedians play drunks as well as anyone before or since. Minta Durfee, Fatty's real life wife at the time, plays his wife here. The spouses go at it quite a bit before Charlie checks out the commotion next door to find Fatty in the same situation he's in. Charlie and Fatty become fast friends and steal away to the hotel's restaurant while the wives argue with each other. Once in the restaurant, sight gags follow and then the wives. In minutes the whole restaurant is up in arms and Charlie and Fatty run off to get away stealing a boat in the process. The ending is grand. Look closely for Charley Chase in the restaurant. ** of 4 stars.

The Stars Make It Worth Watching

[Michael_Elliott · 7 September 2012]

The Rounders (1914)

*** (out of 4)

Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle show up separately at their homes where they take a beating from their wives. The two eventually bump into one another in more way than one and decide to go out together but of course the nagging wives follow. THE ROUNDERS is far from a classic movie and the truth is that's it's barely even a good one. With that said, it's impossible not to at least enjoy seeing the two comic legends working together and both of them delivering nice performances. As far as the comedy goes, it's very hit and miss because the majority of the times we're just getting the same gags over and over. The two drunks stumble around, knock things over and they each get hit a lot. This pretty much happens throughout the entire running time and their drunk level seems to change from one scene to the next. I still thought Chaplin and Arbuckle had some fine chemistry working together and this is show during the scenes where the two are trying to hold each other up and walk at the same time. This is certainly far from their best work but it's still worth watching.

Goodbye cruel world? a Chaplin and Arbuckle comedy short

[weezeralfalfa · 6/10 · 29 August 2018]

Seldom in silent film comedies does any character appear to die, despite various supposed bodily insults. Thus, this film is very unusual(unique?) in that both the lead characters appear to be drowning, without resistance, at the end. A dual suicide?, or are they so drunk that they don't realize that their leaky rowboat is quickly sinking. In either case, the film should be considered a tragedy rather than a comedy, if they do drown........ It's not hard to tell that Charlie Chaplin wrote and directed this film, as he has the meatier role, compared to Roscoe Arbuckle's role. They arrive independently back at their hotel, weaving among the guests in the lobby, where Roscoe loses his balance in striking a match on his shoe, and ends up in a lady's lap. They enter their respective rooms, which are across the hall from each other, to deal with their wife's anger. Chaplin's wife(Phyllis Allen) is bigger than he, and dominates him in their confrontation. She offers him a chair, then slyly pulls it away as he tries to sit down. His antics on the bed, and her response is hilarious......In contrast, Rosco is larger than his wife, and pushes her on the bed when she scolds. Eventually, she strikes back, flooring him with a punch, but he recovers and tries to choke her. Charlie's wife hears her screaming, and boots Charlie out the door to find out what's going on. As he comes flying through the door, he knocks Rosco flat. Soon, Charlie's wife comes over and argues with Roscoe's wife, probably about whose husband is a bad influence on the other..........The boys manage to sneak away from their squabbling wives, and go to a restaurant, where they soon make a nuisance of themselves, pulling tablecloths off tables to serve as sheets, while they recline. Eventually, the wives find them, and a general ruckus results. Again, the boys manage to sneak out, and head for a small lake, where they commandeer a small rowboat, and go offshore. Meanwhile, their wives and others catch up with them, but too late to prevent them from sinking underwater as their leaky boat sinks. It's a moderately funny film, and provides a rare chance to see Chaplin and Arbuckle interact. Available at YouTube.

We all start somewhere

[StevePulaski · 6/10 · 8 May 2015]

There is certainly a group of people that would bill the 1914 short film The Rounders as comedic gold, but to me, it seems more like two great, even legendary, comedic actors slumming or going through the motions. The Rounders, to Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin, seems nothing more than a warmup for larger, more thoughtful shorts and full-length features. It's perfectly safe and innocence, as nearly all comic shorts were during this time period, but for two large names comes a great deal of expectations that The Rounders barely fulfills.

We watch Arbuckle and Chaplin stumble around town drunk, fighting with their girlfriends and eventually being chased out of town by other townspeople following Arbuckle attempting to strangle his wife after she hits him. That element alone is a bit extreme, especially for a film of this era, and Arbuckle and Chaplin simply do not funnel the same kind of energy into the story or the gags to back something like that up.

The Rounders winds up having an entertaining final minutes because things finally pick up and become pleasantly manic. However, at the same time, sitting and watching Arbuckle and Chaplin stumble their way through town isn't so funny when one recalls what these actors have done and would go on to do later in their careers. For them, this was an impromptu warmup exercise on the set of a film in comparison to their other works.

Starring: Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Directed by: Charlie Chaplin.

Drunk Charlie

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 31 May 2018]

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.

He did do better than 'The Rounders', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'The Rounders' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'The Rounders' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The episodic story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy, occasionally repetitive and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'The Rounders' is not bad at all, pretty good actually.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with shades of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Fatty Arbuckle is also great and their chemistry carries 'The Rounders' to very entertaining effect.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'The Rounders' is still very amusing, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

To conclude, decent. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Chaplin and Arbuckle and practically no plot!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 17 May 2006]

This is a film from Chaplin's first year in films. During this VERY hectic year, he churned out film after film after film for Keystone Studios and the quality of the films are, in general, quite poor. That's because the character of "the Little Tramp" was far from perfected and the films really had no script--just the barest of story ideas. While some Chaplin lovers might think this is sacrilege, all these movies I have seen are pretty lousy. Yes, there are some cute slapstick moments but barely any plot--absolutely NOTHING like the Chaplin we all came to love in his full-length films of the 20s and 30s.

This movie pairs Chaplin with Fatty Arbuckle. They drink and punch and fall down a lot. That's really all there is to this film. Content-wise, it's a big fat zero.

Drunkenness and D.V.

[view_and_review · 2/10 · 13 December 2022]

This short had Charlie Chaplin clad in an atypical tophat and cape though his antics were still the same. He played the drunken Mr. Full who came home to a very unhappy wife (Phyllis Allen). Across the hall another drunkard, Mr. Fuller (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle), came home to an equally unhappy wife (Minta Durfee). There was domestic violence abound (in slapstick fashion) as the two men faced their fates in the form of angry wives.

Chaplin is funniest to me as a sober tramp. I prefer his clumsy antics not be the result of imbibing. And if this short wasn't bad enough they threw in there a character in blackface for good measure.

simple fun

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 8 August 2020]

Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle play two drunken gentlemen. They are neighbors and they return to disapproving wives.

It's a 16 minute short with two famous silent era stars. The concept is simple. It's easy fun. It's very basic. It may be better to get even more basic by staying in the hotel rooms. I would have liked the guys passing out in the hallway and the wives walk out on them.

Physical Keystone Early Comedy

[DKosty123 · 5/10 · 19 June 2010]

This 1914 Comedy short has pretty much survived intact due to the fact that Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed & starred in it. Most of Chaplins work survived because of his fame.

This one has a distinctive cast as Chaplin teams with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle as a pair of drunks who come home to their wives, both of whom are obviously upset with them. In fact there is a lot of physical comedy as both drunks come home & both angry wives get physical with them & start pounding them. Charlies wife pounds him & puts him into Bed to sleep it off. Arbuckles wife pounds him & leave him on their apartment floor to sleep it off.

Charlies wife gets concerned about what is going on with Arbuckle & his wife as they make quite a noise. She wakes up Charlie & they go over too see what's happening. After another round of physical stuff, Arbuckle steals his wife's purse, & the money in it. Then he & Charlie go to a fancy restaurant for another brawl with bar patrons. Charlie Chase & Edgar Kennedy pop up here.

Overall this is slap stick physical comedy that worked well in 1914 but does not have that taste for today's audience. The ending has our drunks wind up in a lake in a leaky rowboat & drown as their horrified wives scream at them from shore.

This is before Chaplin did the Little Tramp. This is Charlie doing drunk and with all the talent in this cast, I guess a real plot was not needed. Wives punching out drunk men, maybe in 1914 - but it seems today that is very rare.

Chaplin and Arbuckle -- Drunken Destroyers of the Universe

[alonzoiii-1 · 8/10 · 7 April 2008]

Most Keystones do not age well. Comedy tastes have changed over 90 years, and the hyper-speed frantic randomness of the early Keystones tend to leave the viewer wondering what was supposed to be funny. And frequently, plots are both too complicated and stereotyped.

This one is different. There ain't no plot. All that happens is that Chaplin and Arbuckle, roaringly drunk, annoy their wives, patrons of a restaurant, and eventually the entire civilized world (which seems to have found its way to Griffith Park in LA.) Charlie Chapin and Fatty Arbuckle are very, very funny drunks. They just have the routine down. Chaplin's drunken behavior around his wife is hilarious, because he knows how to make inanimate objects do all the wrong things, and he knows how to pitch his body in all sorts of wrong angles. Arbuckle is not the comedian that Chaplin is, but he keeps up, particularly when he and Chaplin start to demolish a posh restaurant.

The key to this short is pacing. Chaplin and Arbuckle do not spaz out in the typical Keystone way, to assure everyone what hysterical fellows they are. They just move according to their own looped logic, and let the application of that logic be the humor.

The ending, by the way, can be taken as a bit of a cosmic statement -- and is that rare thing in a short comedy -- the perfect closing gag.

Worth a look

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 17 August 2020]

There isn't much more to this silent short than people decking each other and acting drunk, but comedy pioneers Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle do it pretty creatively, and Phyllis Allen and Minta Durfree (Fatty's real-life wife) are pretty good themselves. You'll have to set aside the fact that domestic violence (in both directions) is part of the humor, and a brief appearance of a doorman in blackface, but these didn't stop me from enjoying it. There were a couple moments that made me chuckle, including one where Fatty quietly pulls a tablecloth over him in a crowded dining room as if he's going to bed while Charlie hams it up. It's silly material but the way they controlled their bodies and executed the physical humor was clever. Worth 13 minutes for sure.

Pity the weak women...

[Anonymous_Maxine · 10/10 · 25 July 2001]

Chaplin once again plays a drunk, but this time the result is much better because he plays alongside Fatty Arbuckle, another, ah, giant of the silent comedy. Charlie plays a drunk guy who goes home drunk to his wife, his life's "big mistake." At the same time, Charlie's neighbor across the hall goes home drunk to his wife, and of course, each couple gets into hilarious arguments.

Charlie's wife sends him over to the room across the hall, thinking that with all the commotion, someone must be getting murdered over there. When he gets there, he finds a similar situation to his own, and after much confusion, the women wind up arguing with each other, and Charlie and the other man wind up stealing money from the other man's wife and going out to drink more.

The following scene, at the restaurant where they go to drink, is one of the funnier scenes in the movie, as each man pulls off a table cloth and uses it for a blanket while he goes to sleep, "making themselves at home." Charlie busies himself lighting matches off of a bad man's head and fighting with the restaurant's employees. Eventually, their wives find them, and they wind up fleeing for their drunken freedom, ultimately stealing a canoe and pushing off with it, falling asleep side by side in it as it slowly sinks. An uncharacteristic ending, but at least it was different, and with the speed with which they cranked out these films in 1914, a little variety goes a long way.

Mildly Entertaining; Fun to See Arbuckle and Chaplin together

[Snow Leopard · 3 March 2004]

It's fun to see Roscoe Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin together (plus a couple of brief appearances by Al St. John), although this movie as a whole is only mildly entertaining. Not that either of the stars disappoints, by any means, but the material limits them somewhat. It's also interesting, though, to see an earlier version of the extended, more carefully planned "drunk" acts that Chaplin did in features like "The Cure" and the excellent "One A.M."

The story is episodic, with the two stars as a couple of good-natured drunks who get into trouble with their wives and with plenty of others. Chaplin and Arbuckle could do that kind of material as well as anyone. Most of it is funny enough, although after a while it starts to run out of steam and seem a bit forced. There are a couple of good gags to go along with their drunk act, though other parts are fairly routine stuff. It's probably a little above average for its time, but it's not as imaginative as either Arbuckle's or Chaplin's best material.

Prelude to the Chaplin' s brilliant dancing distortion

[luigicavaliere · 9/10 · 20 February 2019]

Two men are mistreated by their wives in their respective rooms and chased out of the house. The two wives and the two husbands confront each other in moments of agitation.The two men go to the restaurant, behaving as if they were at home: one of them spreads his feet, the other leans on another client. Charlot takes a tablecloth as a sheet and lies on the floor. The wives reach the husbands at the restaurant: they beat them and put them on the run. The two men reach a canoe and lie on it sinking into the water. In the movie there are still the chase and slapstick mechanisms, but the episode of the table cover that becomes sheet preludes to the brilliant dancing distortion between Chaplin and the objects.

A couple of genial jags

[deickemeyer · 11 February 2019]

Chas. Chapman and the Fat Boy appear in this as a couple of genial jags. The humor is not of an offensive sort, though few performers can avoid this in such scenes. The angry wives follow them and they take to a boat in the lake, which is swamped in an amusing manner. - The Moving Picture World, September 19, 1914