The Butcher Boy (Short 1917)

The Butcher Boy (Short 1917). 30m | Not Rated

“This Roscoe u0026quot;Fattyu0026quot; Arbuckle comedy is best remembered for featuring a young Buster Keaton, fresh from splitting with his familyu0026#39;s roughhouse Vaudeville act, in his film debut. Buster gets quite a substantial part in this film and itu0026#39;s quite a funny one overall. u0026quot;The Butcher Boyu0026quot; has lots of laughs and is an example of pure old-fashioned slapstick done well, though it would seem to come from the brief era of two-reel comedies when filmmakers still imagined in one-reel segments as a matter of course.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe first half of the film takes place in a general store, with Arbuckle as the the butcher boy of the title. Itu0026#39;s an excuse to mine the many possibilities for fast physical humor that a general store provides, and Arbuckle really shows himself to be a 300-pound acrobat, demonstrating subtlety, skill, and grace in his performance of what might have been unremarkable slapstick routines that raise them to a different level. A running gag has him flipping a large butcher knife casually so that it spins accurately into itu0026#39;s proper position stuck into the cutting board, and Iu0026#39;m still stunned that Arbuckle really seems to do it each time. Thereu0026#39;s also a really nice gag that sees him leaning on his scale and confused as to why his cuts of meat weigh so much.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBuster Keaton is a boy who comes into to buy some molasses, and performs deftly in a foot-stuck-to-floor routine that follows. Apart from the odd and almost unsettling half-smile, his idiosyncratic attitude and body language make him recognizable immediately as the Buster we know. He even has his eventually-trademarked flattened hat — here destroyed for the first time when filled, of course, with molasses.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe second half of the film moves into more situation-based comedy and Arbuckle and his rival Al St. John dress in drag to infiltrate Fattyu0026#39;s girlfriendu0026#39;s boarding school. A lot of the humor also comes from the generally surreal and mysteriously laugh-inducing sight of these two odd fellows wearing drag and trying to u0026quot;be girls.u0026quot; buster is in this segment too, but mostly stands there in the occasional cutaway, helping St. John.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe ending of u0026quot;The Butcher Boyu0026quot; becomes a little emptily frenetic, but on the whole and beyond its historical curiosity interest, itu0026#39;s a well-done comedy that gets just the knockabout laughs it is going for.”