In the 1990s it seemed to be all the rage to predict that soon enough technology would evolve that wold make the videophone household technology which would replace the traditional telephone in society. Of course, now most people have such technology at their fingertips with the advent of the webcam, but it's still not ubiquitous because, one might think obviously, sometimes people want to make phone calls when not quite dressed. The short opens with a funny gag that's a a funny take on this, in the classic style of Charley Chase's frequent fanciful science-fiction premises that lead to very practical social punchlines, based on a fun 1924 version of the videophone that shows its been in the public consciousness for quite some time.
This one reeler is from earlier in Charley Chase's career, and it rally shows him and director hitting their stride in the creation of a new style of film comedy within astonishing ten-minute constraints. It's quite brilliant in that sense and extremely funny. The real central premise is that Charley's boss is cheating on his wife, and wants Charley to accompany them to the night club as an alibi. Hilariously, EVERYBODY'S spouse eventually shows up, and a complex networked gag sequence develops wonderfully.
Now, the old tropes of a man trying to cheat and being discovered, or not cheating and accidentally placing himself in a situation in which he seems to be, are real canards. But by taking that comedy staple and turning it into a reductio ad absurdum, methodically developing a situation where this occurs to about seven people at once, Charley Chase brings it to a whole new level of comedy. In a sense, what Laurel and Hardy did to make the pie fight funny again in their short "The Battle of the Century" -- in which the fight slowly grows to involve an entire street and thousands of pies -- Chase does for the caught-cheating gag in "Too Many Mammas." There's also a great sequence of Charley having to dance in which, rather unusually, the humor comes less from situation than from the pure sight gag comedy of watching the gawky Charley improvise a hot jazz dance.
This short is not only very funny, but also a quintessential film in defining Chase's and Leo McCarey's comedy styles.
