The Rough House (1917) User Reviews

A few funny moments, but not coherent enough to get a better rating

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 16 July 2006]

This is a pretty poor film in some ways. First, although Buster Keaton is in the film, he is not given much to do. Instead, Fatty Arbuckle is clearly the star and Keaton and Al St. John are just along for the ride.

The film has a few cute moments, such as the incredibly slow and lazy way that Fatty responds to a fire he accidentally started in the house. But, unfortunately, too much of the film is mindless slapstick--punching, kicking and falling for little apparent reason. While this was very popular in the early days of film, by 1917, this was fortunately becoming passé. Not that the violence and action was bad, but that films in the early days had almost no plot--just action and hitting. This film unfortunately didn't find the right balance--just way too much mindless pratfalls.

Too random

[MissSimonetta · 5/10 · 4 August 2015]

Watching The Rough House and other independent Arbuckle shorts, I am reminded of the sort of films I made with my friends when I was in junior high and high school. Weird, plot-less things where being funny and acting strange reigned over any sense of story or coherence. It's obvious watching these films that everyone involved in their making was having a great time, barely able to keep themselves from cracking up in the middle of a take.

However, The Rough House is not among Arbuckle's better efforts due to this meandering. Much of the short is a flurry of people hitting, kicking, shouting, and falling over. The best moments come in when the comedy comes from the characters, such as the lazy Arbuckle nonchalantly trying to put out the fire raging on his bed from a cigarette butt he dropped or the jealous cook played by Al St. John overreacting to the comely maid flirting with a delivery boy played by Buster Keaton in his second film appearance. Everything else is underwhelming, even random.

Watch it for Arbuckle's bread roll dance

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 1 April 2023]

The Rough House, a Roscoe Arbuckle short featuring Buster Keaton in a supporting role in just his second film, isn't exactly sophisticated when it comes to humor. A lot of the comedy consists of people falling down or being knocked down. By my count, Buster alone hit the deck 11 times in his first 3 and a half minutes on the screen, over 3 times a minute. There are a few exceptions though, like Arbuckle using forks stuck into bread rolls to emulate a simple little dance, something Charlie Chaplin surely saw and improved on in The Gold Rush eight years later. That's at the 3:41 point and probably this film's best moment, but it's brief. Arbuckle also cleverly uses a fan as a potato slicer in the kitchen and a sponge to squeeze soup into the bowls of diners as a waiter, and I wish there had more riffs on this sort of thing. The film also seems choppy in a few places, usually around moments when women are falling, being groped, or kissed, suggesting to me that the surviving print may have been a victim to a local censorship board. Regardless, it's not very remarkable, and maybe only worth checking out for the dinner roll bit.

Some Good Moments & A Couple of Classic Gags

[Snow Leopard · 22 August 2001]

This short comedy has some very good moments that make up for other stretches that are more routine. There are also a couple of classic gags worth watching for in themselves. The setting has 'Mr. Rough' (Arbuckle) trying to endure a visit from his mother-in-law, with Keaton and Al St. John on hand to create additional havoc. The two best gags come right at the beginning: watch for Fatty's fire-fighting technique, later imitated by other comedians, and then right after that Fatty improvises a gag that Charlie Chaplin later refined and made into a classic - it's a nice surprise, and worth watching for. And after that, the rest of the film also has some good moments that fans of Arbuckle and Keaton should enjoy.

One-Note but Uproarious, Arbuckle and Keaton Burn Down the House

[drqshadow-reviews · 7/10 · 1 August 2020]

Housekeeping chaos for a well-off homeowner, his small cooking/cleaning staff and a visiting party of refined dinner guests with ulterior motives. As with most slapstick comedies of the day, it only takes a little nudge to transition from a sleepy ho-hum day around the house into a full-blown food fight with smoke in the air and a never-ending parade of head-over-heels pratfalls. This one spirals out of control in a hurry, with Fatty Arbuckle setting the bedroom ablaze before he's had his morning coffee and Buster Keaton flopping flat on his back twice in his first sixty seconds, then snowballs until Arbuckle is gleefully empying a gun into his own kitchen door while Keaton hurls butcher knives at the chef.

Honestly, there's very little to The Rough House beyond sight gags and ever-increasing stakes in a high rollers' game of physical one-upsmanship, but it's a riot when it's in the groove. Arbuckle and Keaton's brands of expressive comedy are compatible and complimentary, and their constant efforts to out-goof each other lead to increasingly rich rewards for the viewer. It doesn't mean much of anything, but it's a hilarious way to kill half an hour.

Not great

[JoeytheBrit · 4/10 · 28 March 2007]

Haven't seen much of Arbuckle since I was a kid and, on the evidence of this effort, I haven't really missed much. I can't help wondering how famous Arbuckle's name would be today had his career not been destroyed by the Virginia Rappe affair. Probably as famous as Larry Semon, who was also big in the silent era but is now all but forgotten - and with good reason.

Arbuckle is outshone in every scene by his sidekick, Buster Keaton. This was only Keaton's second film but his technique is already far in advance of Fatty's. The story is non-existent, merely a prop on which to hang the relentless stream of pratfalls and sight gags. That's OK if the gags are funny and their execution spot on, but only Keaton is getting it right, so the laughs are few and far between. As others have pointed out already, its Fatty's lackadaisical attempts to put out a fire and his sausage-on-a-fork dance, which pre-empts Charlie the tramp's more famous version by a good seven years, that rise above the mediocre.

Plotless Trivel

[SendiTolver · 4/10 · 21 August 2018]

'The Rough House' that marks the directorial debut of Buster Keaton and is his second collaboration with Fatty Arbuckle, falls flat. The most amusing part is in the beginning of the movie where Arbuckle's character nonchalantly tries to put out a fire with cup of water. From there on the film goes downhill. Repetitive gags of someone getting hit int the face with stuff (I know it is slapstick and pie in the face was widely used gag, but this time they did it too much). Too random, too messy and too noisy (for silent film).

Not a rough watch, but could have been funnier

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 15 October 2017]

"The Rough House" is an American black-and-white film from 1917, so this one has its 100th anniversary this year. According to IMDb, it is 22 minutes long, but the version I watched ran for under 19 minutes, so probably had more frames per minute. Anyway, the star in here is Fatty once again, but two other stars of the silent film days, namely Buster Keaton and Al St. John, play big supporting parts too. The former is even credited for writing and directing here next to Arbuckle. Like most of Roscoe's other stuff, it is all about the comedy in here. This is the story of something like a hotel, but the employees, played by the actors I mentioned, create all kinds of chaos. Sadly the outcome does not equal the talent and premise here as honestly, it is a case of quantity over quality. Constant attempt at hilarity make it seem a bit desperate, but only very few of them were actually working. In my case that would be the swam/ soup scene for example, but that's pretty subjective. Fatty managed to elevate the material while the other two weren't that great to me. Have to give this silent film a thumbs-down here. Not recommended.

A rough housing banquet that kids should love

[weezeralfalfa · 8/10 · 27 August 2018]

This is my idea of what an olde tyme knockabout silent comedy short should be, and I'm sure lots of kids, especially, will agree, for they love to see adults acting like children......Roscoe Arbuckle's dallying in trying to extinguish the fire on his bed, running back and forth to the kitchen to fill a tea cup with water, reminds me of a later similar scene in the Laurel and Hardy "Way Out West". Once Roscoe gets the attention of the gardener(Buster Keaton), who is hosing some plants, it's like a water pistol fight, with Keaton and Roscoe soaking everything and everybody, except the fire.......Al St. John plays the cook. He mostly has fun getting into trouble with his cake mix, dropping it, falling on it, skidding across the kitchen on it, and throwing it at people. When he mops the floor, it makes the floor slick, so that Keaton falls with the groceries, breaking the eggs. The maid also falls. Then, she and Keaton do some flirting, making Al jealous. Al and Keaton throw things at each other. This spreads to the dining room, where it involves Roscoe, who is eating. Keaton throws a knife that goes in Al's mouth! The action then returns to the kitchen and backyard, where they get into throwing dough at each other, and manage to hit a policeman in the face. At police headquarters, the weird-looking chief offers them the choice of jail or joining the force. Naturally, they choose the latter......I don't fully understand what the last segment is about. Two men have dinner with Roscoe's wife and mother-in-law. (I assume the mother-in-law is the heftier one, who rang Roscoe's neck earlier). Roscoe, as the replacement cook, brings in a dish in which he poured gasoline. He lights it, and soon fire and smoke clog the room, creating confusion. Meanwhile, 2 men are outside the house, one sneaking into the bedroom, to steal some jewelry. Police headquarters is notified of the strange goings on at this house. Keaton and Al are sent out to investigate. They have an eventful journey there, and arrive just as the thieves are about to leave.......Unlike the first film in this series: "The Butcher Boy", there is no background music.... See it at YouTube, or as part of several DVD sets.

The Rough House was a hilarious early Arbuckle-Keaton collaboration

[tavm · 10/10 · 3 July 2009]

This silent comedy short, the second of the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle ones co-starring Buster Keaton and-according to IMDb-Keaton's first as co-director, was a hilarious one that I just watched on Image Entertainment's The Best Arbuckle-Keaton Collection DVD's. First, Fatty tries to put out a fire on his bed with just a cup of water. Then, Buster as a delivery boy comes in and, along with Al St. John as a cook, wreaks havoc fighting over the maid. Then, his wife and mother-in-law entertain some guests who turn out to be...Oh, just watch The Rough House and just marvel at how things escalate to such absurd heights you can't help laughing all the way through like I did. I was especially blown by the way Buster's knife was thrown at certain places. And, yes, Arbuckle does a nice fork-and-roll dance here that Chaplin later put in The Gold Rush. So on that note, I highly recommend The Rough House.

First Buster Keaton Directed Film--co-director with Roscoe Arbuckle

[springfieldrental · 9/10 · 7 August 2021]

The most popular silent movie comedians in their heyday were permitted, if not encouraged, to direct their own films. Comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Roscoe Arbuckle were freely given the independence to direct, act, and often times write the scripts for their own movies. The payoffs for their success were beneficial for both their studios and for themselves. Buster Keaton joined that illustrious rank when he began his own production company in 1920 where he directed all his films for the next 10 years until 1930.

Keaton received his first taste in commanding a film production behind the lens when co-director Arbuckle gave him the responsibility to direct of few scenes in June 1917's "The Rough House." The motion picture was Buster's only second one he appeared in, but he became a quick study in learning his new profession as a movie actor after years on the stage. Also, he had begun to understand the craft of move making, assisting Arbuckle on writing the scenarios of "The Rough House." The title of Keaton's partly-directed debut film derives from the last names of Arbuckle's household, The Roughs. A day in the life of The Roughs consists of a fire in the bedroom, a male fight and arrest over a housemaid's attentions, a dinner party gone haywire, and a theft of jewels in the house. And that's just in a 24-hour period.

One particular sequence of special interest to film historians is when Roscoe places a pair of forks into two rolls of bread and choreographs a dancing scene with them. In Chaplin's 1925's "The Gold Rush," one of cinema's more famous sequences is when he's entertaining his visionary female guests with his "bread roll dance." This illustrates how comedians glean ideas from one another.

Fatty Arbuckle

[Michael_Elliott · 10 March 2008]

Rough House, The (1917)

*** (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle helps run a seaside resort but trouble starts when a deliver boy (Buster Keaton) shows up. It's rather amazing to see how much time the star/director Fatty gave to Keaton who's allowed to steal the show with his physical comedy. Another interesting thing is that there's a dinner scene where Fatty puts forks in two rolls and does a dance, which Chaplin borrowed eight years later in The Gold Rush.

Butcher Boy, The (1917)

** (out of 4)

The butcher boy (Fatty Arbuckle) falls for the store owner's daughter and must fight to get her. The first half of the film takes place in the store and has Buster Keaton playing an obnoxious customer. This half is very funny but the second half dealing with Fatty dressing in drag in order to sneak into a boarding school really doesn't work.