Down on the Farm was a pleasant enough silent comedy that opens with a farmer and his daughter tending to their farm in the morning. A lot of the gags revolve around animals like a stampede of ducks or a dog filling up a bucket of water or drinking milk from the cow the farmer's milking. It's a different type of humor than I'm not used to in comedic silent shorts and I enjoyed it. But it quickly becomes more traditional with objects spilling and people falling and fighting.
The plot that develops involve a seedy landlord, who earlier tries to rape a married tenant, becoming interested in marrying the farmer's daughter. She's doesn't want to but her father is for it so she creates a non-existent previous marriage to successfully fend the landlord off. Unfortunately when she's about to marry the laborer she loves said fake marriage results in some angry complications. This only worsens when the seedy landlord finds out the farmer's daughter is about to come into some money. Along the way there's a scene with a cat chasing a mouse chasing the scared farmer's daughter onto some shelves, a dog saving a toddler from falling into a river, and some careless swinging of an ax in a general store.
I liked the pleasant humor of the opening but after that it became fairly standard with only a few highlights. It also slows down a bit when the guy whom the daughter claimed to have previously married shows up (though it's followed by a decent, if brief, chase scene with two cars and a motorcycle). Furthermore this short might have more title cards than any I've seen before. They're usually only a single line and sometimes explain things that don't need explaining or state what someone's said but mostly they're simply not too funny one-liners. It wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many and they were placed better, but it really kills the movie's flow and humor when there are lame sayings inserted into the middle of chases. I was surprised when one of the fisticuffs results in a character getting a rather bloody mouth. I've seen it before in a few shorts but usually not so that most of the bottom half of the face is black. I should also add that the ending was really cute and gave me a little laugh.
The plot that develops involve a seedy landlord, who earlier tries to rape a married tenant, becoming interested in marrying the farmer's daughter. She's doesn't want to but her father is for it so she creates a non-existent previous marriage to successfully fend the landlord off. Unfortunately when she's about to marry the laborer she loves said fake marriage results in some angry complications. This only worsens when the seedy landlord finds out the farmer's daughter is about to come into some money. Along the way there's a scene with a cat chasing a mouse chasing the scared farmer's daughter onto some shelves, a dog saving a toddler from falling into a river, and some careless swinging of an ax in a general store.
I liked the pleasant humor of the opening but after that it became fairly standard with only a few highlights. It also slows down a bit when the guy whom the daughter claimed to have previously married shows up (though it's followed by a decent, if brief, chase scene with two cars and a motorcycle). Furthermore this short might have more title cards than any I've seen before. They're usually only a single line and sometimes explain things that don't need explaining or state what someone's said but mostly they're simply not too funny one-liners. It wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many and they were placed better, but it really kills the movie's flow and humor when there are lame sayings inserted into the middle of chases. I was surprised when one of the fisticuffs results in a character getting a rather bloody mouth. I've seen it before in a few shorts but usually not so that most of the bottom half of the face is black. I should also add that the ending was really cute and gave me a little laugh.