Coney Island (1917)

I’m not sure what it is about this one.  The plot is thinner than paper and I’d be hard-pressed to explain what actually happens, but I still love it.  There’s just something, something fun – it’s a delight.

Okay, so this time around, there’s really not a whole lot I can say other than “Fatty, Buster, and Al St. John have fun and get into trouble at Coney Island.”  All three have their hearts set on Alice Mann and do their best to woo her (who is in turn with all of them at different points of the short – she’s really fickle.)  Also features Fatty’s dog Luke.  That’s really all there is to it.

Oh, but it’s fun.  I like seeing Coney Island circa 1917, getting a glimpse of what the various attractions were like.  The whole short of course has a carnival-like atmosphere, a buoyancy that carries the negligible story through to the end.  I dunno; if I’m just going to watch Buster, Fatty, and Al running around being silly, it might as well be at Coney Island.  Fatty “having to” dress in drag because there are no men’s swimsuits that fit him is an obvious gag, as is Al then falling for Fatty-in-drag, but it’s all done well.  It also gives us one of my favorite Fatty Arbuckle gags not involving Buster – the scene where Fatty is changing and motions for the camera to only shoot him from the waist up.  (This fourth-wall-breaking modesty reminds me of the cameraman covering the lens with his hand when Sybil Seely gets out of the tub in One Week.  I wonder if Buster was inspired by this scene, or if he might have even come up with the gag in the first place?)  Oh yeah, and Fatty spanks a fish.  That happens.

This is the second short in a row where Fatty is married and falls for a different girl.  Interesting how the unmarried Fatty in The Butcher Boy and His Wedding Night is in puppy love with a sweet girl while the married Fatty in Oh Doctor! and Coney Island can’t wait to get away from the nagging shrew and set his cap at someone else.  I wrote before about whether or not Buster’s work is cynical about romance, but I think Fatty might have him beat (to be fair, most of Buster’s films end in marriage, but still.  A wandering eye wasn’t very typical for him.)

Speaking of Buster, he’s terrific fun here as one of Fatty’s romantic rivals (plus a brief second appearance as one of a gaggle of cops, in which he has an enormous mustache and wears his police cap sideways.)  He shimmies up a column to get a better view of a parade, he expertly wields a fishing pole (but not for catching fish!), he causes some damage with a “test of strength” mallet, and he does a backflip just because he can.  Be advised, there are a few places where the exaggerated facial expressions get distracting – I don’t know what it is, but on Buster, it just looks so weird.  However, while they take me out of the humor a bit, they’re used pretty sparingly.  The rest of the time, he’s the scrappy Arbuckle-short version of the Stone Face we know and love.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and a little suggestiveness.