Fatty's Plucky Pup (1915) User Reviews

Luke To The Rescue

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 24 June 2007]

Luke the Wonder Dog showed that Rin Tin Tin or Lassie had nothing on him when it came to rescuing damsels in distress. In Fatty's Plucky Pup, Fatty is the one who helps Luke rescue Josephine Stevens from the clutches of Edgar Kennedy and gang.

In this film Fatty's a layabout lout of a man, living at home with mother Phyllis Allen and courting next door neighbor Josephine Stevens.

Into his life comes Luke the Wonder Dog after escaping from a pair of singularly inept dogcatchers in the Mack Sennett tradition, one of whom is future movie cowboy sidekick Al St. John. After Fatty rescues him he, the dog, and Stevens go on a date.

During which time Fatty gets taken by Edgar Kennedy running a shell game on the street. Of course Fatty gets a gun and turns the tables on Kennedy. That's when Kennedy decides to capture Stevens and the rest of the plot falls into play.

Fatty Arbuckle reminded me a whole lot of John Candy in this film whereas in another feature he reminded me of Jackie Gleason. In fact Arbuckle, Gleason, and Candy form a line of overweight men who were very funny. That tradition would also include Oliver Hardy and Chris Farley. You can see similarities in the comedic styles of all of them.

Fatty's Plucky Pup is a good example of Arbuckle's comic style. And still pretty funny today.

Unpretentious, silly and fun

[boblipton · 7/10 · 8 June 2002]

All right. It's not ON THE WATERFRONT. It is, however, several minutes of fast-paced, good-natured humor. The first half is a series of jokes that Arbuckle would elaborate on in ROUGH HOUSE three years down the road. The second half is a warmup for TEDDY AT THE THROTTLE, complete with Keystone Kops and the famous Keystone cyclorama. Roscoe tosses off a joke and gets on to the next one -- none of the elaboration of Chaplin or the grandeur of Keaton, but funnier, perhaps, for not having a fuss made. Look for yourself and see.

How Lazy Can You Get?

[barnesgene · 7/10 · 28 June 2007]

Most comments are dismissive of the first half of this short film. It consists of Fatty getting in his mother's way during washing day and listlessly smoking in bed (and we all know how THAT turns out!). Fatty tends to do more harm than good, in fact, and every time he seeks to correct one of his goofs the result is even worse. It's a quick but careful study in just how useless a person can become. All that changes, of course, when Fatty finds a resourceful (albeit illegal) way to get his money back from some con artists, and then is actually challenged to do some good. But for me, notwithstanding an inventive second half, that first half of the movie is what's fascinating.

Has Some Very Good Material After a Slow Start

[Snow Leopard · 24 November 2004]

After a rather slow start, this silent comedy picks up and has some very good material in the later parts of the movie. It has a relatively long running time for its year and genre, and it could have been better with a few minutes of the plainer material cut out towards the beginning. But it ends up being worth seeing anyway, thanks to a solid second half.

Most of the first part shows 'Fatty' Arbuckle's character living at home with his mother. There are a couple of decent gags, but overall it's rather dull. The one interesting aspect of it is that there are at least a couple of gags that are recognizable from later Arbuckle features, in which he seems to have refined the ideas and the timing to make them work better. Otherwise, many of the gags in this part are predictable and somewhat routine.

The second part is very good, with "Fatty's Plucky Pup" taking a starring role. It uses some creatively silly predicaments to set up a pleasingly manic chase sequence with Arbuckle, the dog, the villains, and some of Keystone's comic policemen all involved. It's filmed in an amusing style that creates some actual excitement and comedy at the same time that it gently parodies itself. It's the kind of touch that is hard to achieve but that works well, and it makes this a worthwhile short comedy despite the more prosaic first half.

A great illustration of how Hollywood's sexism . . .

[cricket30 · 7/10 · 16 January 2014]

. . . was rampant as far back as WWI. The name of the character who is the light of Fatty's life in FATTY'S PLUCKY PUP is simply "the girl next door" here. Worse yet, the actress who plays this eventual kidnapping victim apparently IS LOST TO HISTORY, though all the guys with the least little bit parts in PLUCKY PUP have THEIR names plastered all over IMDb for posterity and beyond. (This would be like Liam Neeson calling his abducted daughter "what's her name" in TAKEN, and no one knowing that Maggie Grace played daughter "Kim.") The parts of this 27-minute short are so poorly stitched together that it's like watching something with the reels out of order. But when FATTY tries to follow Fido into the kidnappers' shack through a little doggy hole, his headstand (by the aptly-nicknamed 300-pounder) is something to behold. Less pleasing are all the continuity problems and plot holes, such as WHY are the dog-catchers in cahoots with the Shell Game Scammers?! Plus, what do they think kidnapping Fatty's neighbor will get them? This is ALMOST as dumb as American film censorship--established during Fatty's infamous "tummy rub trials"--but persisting even AFTER his exoneration in 1922 through 2014, OR Taco Bell BANNING my favorite ingredient (onions\chives) from ALL of its dishes for ALL TIME, after onions were WRONGLY ACCUSED of the bad-lettuce food poisoning outbreak a few years back. (I guess lettuce is cheaper.)

Fatty and Luke to the rescue

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 8 December 2016]

"Fatty's Plucky Pup" is a 26-minute live action short film from 1915, so this one had its 100th anniversary last year and nobody should be surprised that it is a black-and-white silent film. The star in here is Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and despite being still in his 20s, he was one of the biggest stars in the industry at that point already, not just physically. Here we have the story of a man struggling with his mother while falling for his neighbor. When the young woman gets abducted, he and his dog must come to the rescue before tragedy happens. Of course, like usually with these old films, a happy end is unavoidable. Arbuckle had already realized at that point that audiences loved animals in movies at least as much as they do today, which is why Luke the Dog is the big star on the same level with Arbuckle here. It's not the young stunning Josephine Stevens or any of the other really experienced and successful silent film actors, but it is the canine. Luke was one of the biggest animal stars back then and appeared in many other films too, some of them with Fatty too. All in all, this film was still not too great of a watch. It suffered, like many other silent films, from lack of (enough) subtitles which made it difficult to understand the story on many occasions. And apart from that, the story really only felt good enough for half the runtime, 15 minutes max. Not even Fatty's charisma could make up for that. Thumbs down, I don't recommend the watch.

10/10, just because it exists.

[dunks58-615-955316 · 10/10 · 25 October 2020]

Sure, you *could* critique this the regular way ... but stop for a moment and think about how you're watching a film made OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Marvel at the amazing skill and intelligence of Luke The Dog. Watch a MASTER of film comedy inventing an entire industry as he works. Not one subtitle. Just pure, hilarious physical comedy at its best. Watch an entire art form being born. Priceless. Literally. Because only one print of this film survived.

Luv that Luke!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 17 July 2006]

Once again, here's a better than average Fatty Arbuckle film that was improved due to the fine acting of Luke the Dog!! In many ways, I prefer his acting over Fatty's--he is one of the most talented dogs I have ever seen and could probably have kicked Lassie's butt if he hadn't been born about twenty years earlier! Plus, he was the smartest dog in silents--and probably helped the US during their Manhattan Project--he was THAT smart! So why is this dog so great? Well, in FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT, he jumped from their house that was washed out to sea and swam to shore and found his way to exactly the person Fatty told him to find! And here in this film, when Mabel is kidnapped and her life is in danger, Luke arrives first and unties her and saves the day--when all Fatty could do was stuff his head through the hole Luke dug to get in the house.

A good, well constructed film with the greatest dog mankind ever has seen. Long live Luke!

Lower Fatty

[Michael_Elliott · 25 February 2008]

Fatty's Plucky Pup (1915)

** (out of 4)

Two-reeler has Fatty in love with his neighbor but he's afraid to tell her. Before he even gets a chance to tell her she is kidnapped by some bad men but thankfully his dog Plucky knows where she is. Here's another two-reeler where it seems like no one even tried to get a laugh. There's not a single laugh in the film, which isn't good since this runs twenty-seven minutes. The opening sequence with Fatty setting is bed on fire is amusing but not funny. The majority of the second half deals with the dog running around various obstacles and again, this is amusing but not funny.