Keystone lampooned many a popular movie in its day. If we often don't notice this, it's because his target was frequently a D.W. Griffith melodrama and we are unfamiliar with the conventions and techniques used by the man that Sennett called "The Master". We do, however, recognize a western when we see it. If it sometimes seems that this is more a straight western than a spoof, it's because we remember some of the weird psychological westerns made in the 1950s, like RANCHO NOTORIOUS. It's not realism, Keystone was experimenting again.
Even as this movie was being made, the western was being turned on its head by William S. Hart, who brought the "Good Bad Man" to the movies. He would get the Sennett treatment the next year in HIS FOOTHILL FOLLY. For the moment, this one is aimed at the sort of sentimental western that infested the genre.
Mack Swain (in a role that in a couple of years would typically go to Ben Turpin) is a rootin' tootin' man's man, a sheriff who can punch out everyone in a bar fight, who shoots so well that his bullet pattern can be recognized on corpses and who can ride his horse past the Keystone cyclorama as well as any. He also loves his grey-haired mother and pretty Louella Maxam, but is much too shy to say so, particularly as she has fallen for Edgar Kennedy, a book-learnit varmint. The usual western tropes ensue.
The casting of fat Mack Swain, the most accomplished scene-stealer in the industry, makes this funny. If the entire cast plays the movie only slightly on the broad side, it may look like a pretty straight drama to the modern audience. However, it should be remembered that the typical cowboy star was a stoic fellow, more often chosen for his ability to ride a horse and wear a big hat than to act. So wooden was the typical cowboy star that the horse was often a better actor and given sizable billing.
Sennett had assembled a comedy troupe that could not only fall on their buttocks. They could act. Some would get the chance to prove it over the decades and some would fade into obscurity -- there's always fresher, more promising talent in Hollywood. This may seem to the modern eye pretty much a straight western of the era, but it was far more. It was better written, better staged -- the bar fight is better fight choreography than would be seen for twenty years -- better shot and better edited than anything this side of Hart's unit.
It is often difficult to appraise anything this old properly. Yes, it needs to be judged by our standards. It also needs to be understood in the context of its period. The modern audience looks at this and sees pretty much a decent, standard western. The contemporary audience would find this a very superior western -- and audaciously funny.
