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 'His Musical Career', still made relatively early on in his career, generally a period where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for (though he is definitely more settled feeling here). 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. 'His Musical Career' has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the best efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.
'His Musical Career' is one of his funniest and most charming efforts from this period. Sure the production values are not as audacious. Appreciated the busier story than most from some other 1914 efforts of his, though occasionally it was a bit hard to follow and still a bit flimsy. 'His Musical Career' for early Chaplin is pretty good and it showed that Chaplin was starting to settle.
While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with more shades than before of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. There is more sympathy and emotion than most of his efforts from this period.
Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'His Musical Career' is still very funny, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.
Overall, pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox
