The Joneses Have Amateur Theatricals (1909) User Reviews

This could have been tightened up a bit.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 24 February 2014]

Mr. and Mrs. Jones have been invited to join the local amateur theatrical society and the group comes to their house to rehearse. However, some silly antics occur--and Mr. Jones thinks the leader of the group is making sweet love to his wife! The film had a decent enough plot idea--the acting is thought to be real by Mr. Jones. However, it sure takes a lot time to get there. Plus, there is a scene with the guys dancing around a table that makes no sense at all and it appears as if the director, D.W. Griffith, just told the cast to wing it. As a result, the results are a bit poor and it could have used about a minute deleted from the film to make it better.

Great comedy

[mrdonleone · 7/10 · 6 January 2020]

And then of course what can we say with these professional actress playing I'm not sure characteristics we have these big people working for DW Griffith and of course we agree upon these that they are all great actors but then all of a sudden we see them play novices like they don't know anything about it and it's really funny to see them try to act but it's really not that great and the camera really is not so great to be blurry and they try everything they can do cuz the story might seem funny in the 1990s comedy that wasn't so successful with an enemy before we know it we can see the DW Griffith try to do a greater thing in sha Allah Allahu Akbar

Professional Actors Playing Amateurs

[boblipton · 8/10 · 12 January 2014]

Besides directing many, many dramas for Biograph, D.W. Griffith directed a goodly number of comedies: a full program for a movie theater. The following year, Biograph would establish a unit to do comedies under Mack Sennett and later Eddie Dillon.

John Cumpson and Florence Lawrence appeared in about ten domestic comedies as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. In this one, they have a nice series of encounters with other members of their theatrical company, with a nice series of gags as Miss Lawrence objects to Mr. Cumpson playing a love scene with a neighbor and a nice turn by Mr. Cumpson and other gentlemen over drinks.

Although the modern movie-goer, if he thinks about silent comedies at all, thinks of them as wild slapstick, there were a lot of relatively polite comedies in the era and this one is very nice. It would not last. Mr. Cumpson would leave Biograph and go to Edison, where he appeared in a number of comedies as "Bumptious." Miss Lawrence would be lured away to what would become Universal, where she became the first star created by the movies. Mack Sennett would take the relatively polite comedy favored by Mr. Griffith and the Biograph management, cross it with French slapstick and make himself the American King of Comedy.

Two by Griffith

[Michael_Elliott · 28 February 2008]

Jones Have Amateur Theatricals, The (1909)

** (out of 4)

A theatrical family gather together to act for one another. I think that's what this D.W. Griffith comedy is about but it's rather hard to gather what the film is going for. There are a couple smiles giving but not any laughs.

Politician's Love Story, A (1909)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A dirty politician sees a comic spoof of himself in the newspaper so he goes out to kill the cartoonist. Mack Sennett shows up in this D.W. Griffith short, which is mildly amusing with a few nice laughs as the crazy man rips through the newsroom looking for the man he wants to kill.

Detached Characters

[Single-Black-Male · 12 February 2004]

The characters are bland in this short film and the story goes nowhere. The 34 year old D.W. Griffith is trying to demonstrate that he can do comedy as well as historical reinterpretation, but he ends up just defining the American nation as homogenous.