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late-silent Collins and Dent one-reel Cameo short, directed by Jules White
This one-reel Cameo short, distributed by Educational, was the second-to-last silent comedy short directed by Jules White, later of Three Stooges fame (his last silent TICKLISH BUSINESS also starred Collins and Dent). It stars the team of Monte Collins and Vernon Dent (see my review of THOSE TWO BOYS, which resembles this is a number of ways, using the same basic premise, but different routines), who have been described as "the poor man's Laurel and Hardy." Actually, there are a bit different than L & H and much more anarchic. Jules White used both Collins and Dent extensively when he was head of comedy shorts production during the sound era at Columbia. The boys are dressed in tuxedos, headed for the Plumbers' Ball, but they wind up crashing some fancy party instead. As this is only a one-reel short (THOSE TWO BOYS, with a similar plot, was two reels, so it started more gradually), we get right down to the anarchic physical comedy. As expected with a Jules White film, the comedy is physical, lowbrow, and often violent. Much of the humor here is butt-oriented, which shows the lengths the film will go to get a laugh. Pants are ripped, rear ends are hanging out, people sit on things that get stuck to their posteriors, the boys rip a piece of window shade every time someone bends over causing the person to think that he has ripped his trousers in the back, Monte Collins wanders around with the butt ripped out of his pants but doesn't know it, etc. I actually like this kind of lowbrow comedy (I'm a Police Academy and Bowery Boys fan!), so the film was great in my opinion. Those who have never seen a silent Jules White fan will see many of his standard procedures in early form here--this short is even BEFORE his infamous DOGVILLE shorts of 1930 and 1931. The running time here is 11 minutes and 30 seconds, not too long to get tedious.
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- django-1
- Mar 1, 2005
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- 1.33 : 1
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