Plot summary (with spoilers): The Little Tramp is a gold prospector in Alaska in the Olden Times. He's dressed like he always does, but he also has a little pick-axe or whatever. It's snowy and cold outside. He has no luck and during a horrible storm encounters
The cabin of escaped fugitive, Black Larsen
He goes inside and the escaped fugitive himself is eating a turkey leg or something he's cooked on the fire. He tries to kick the Tramp out, but every time he opens the door to shove him out, the storm hilariously blows the Tramp back in. This happens about twenty times or so. Then a third dude shows up, prospector Big Jim, who recently discovered a mine filled with gold but had to take shelter in the cabin when the storm showed up. Big Jim bullies the supposed bad guy (who owns the freaking cabin for God's sake) into letting him and Charlie stay there. After a couple days, they're all starving, so they draw cards to see who will go out and get them food. Poor Black Larsen gets the low card, so off he is sent into the storm, despite owning the freaking cabin.
Then more time passes and Big Jim is so hungry he does that Looney Tunes thing where he imagines Charlie as a giant chicken and chases him around the cabin and tries to shoot him. Meanwhile, Black Larsen finds Big Jim's campsite and starts eating his food. Good for you, Black Larsen!
Charlie tries to get Jim to see that he's not a chicken, and Jim sometimes realizes this and stops chasing him, and then fails to realize it and starts chasing him again, over and over, and Charlie does physical "comedy" during this that is indeed impressive but not particularly funny at all. Then a bear shows up, so they shoot and eat it. Phew.
So they part ways and Jim goes back alone to his campsite, where he spies Black Larsen eating his food. They fight, and Larsen knocks Jim out with a shovel and steals his supplies. Then he's killed by an avalanche. (Black Larsen, not Jim).
As for the Little Tramp, he goes into town (?!) and goes to a dance hall, where he meets
Jack, the ladies man
and
His special girl "Ginger"
Ginger is mad at Jack because he's flirting with other ladies, but it's right there in his name, so I'm not sure what her problem is. She tries to make Jack jealous by dancing with the first dude she sees, which of course happens to be Charlie. He falls madly in love with her, and even gets himself a picture of her. (I dunno...there was one lying around on the bar. Maybe she's a performer?)
Then he finds a cabin near town. In fact, it's
Less than the throw of a stone away
which is wonderfully specific, Title Cards, thanks. He sees a man inside eating a big meal, so he pretends to be ill and passes out in front of the man's door. The man brings him inside and gives him a drink and food and Charlie gobbles it all up and then the man says he's going a'prospecting for the next few weeks and Charlie is welcome to stay at his cabin while he's gone. So, faster than you can say "plot contrivance", Charlie has himself a new place to live. Then, Ginger and her girlfriends happen by, having a snowball fight. I imagine the cabin is less than the throw of a snowball away from where they live. Charlie invites them in for some drinks, and they do so, while Charlie goes to get wood for the fire. Immediately, Ginger discovers the picture of herself under Charlie's pillow--forcing us to imagine what Little Tramp Onanism might look like--and shows her friends. They all laugh and get all Mean Girls, deciding to mess with him. Charlie comes back and they ask him if he would like to have dinner with them on New Year's Eve next week at 8:00pm. Charlie says sure and then they leave and he spazzes out and rips up his pillow and feathers fly everywhere and then she comes back in having forgotten her gloves and it's awkward but kinda funny, I guess.
So then New Year's comes, and Charlie has little gifts he's bought all the girls and dinner plates set up, and we cut back to the dance hall and see Ginger and the girls hanging out with Jack and laughing. Charlie falls asleep and dreams of entertaining the girls by putting dinner rolls on his forks and making them dance in that one "best of Charlie Chaplin" clip you've seen on TV all the time. Also, what a terrible dream. Then Charlie wakes up after midnight and trudges into town, just as Ginger decides to go with Jack and the girls to the cabin and fuck with Charlie some more. Man, Ginger just sucks. When they get there, though, Ginger sees the little gifts and the place settings and feels bad and when Jack tries to kiss her, she pushes him away. He gets mad and forces himself on her, and she slaps him. The next day at the tavern, she feels bad and writes a letter,
Sorry for what I did last night. I hope you can forgive me. I love you, Ginger.
Aw...well isn't that sweet. Maybe she's not such a bitch...oh. She gives it to Jack. Jack reads the letter and laughs it off, then Charlie shows up and Jack tells the bartender to give the letter to him. Charlie reads it, and is so happy. He rushes into Ginger's arms, and just then Big Jim shows up. He claims to have found a mine full of gold, but can't find it anymore because the knock on the head with the shovel that Black Larsen gave him made him forget where it was. He insists Charlie take him back to the cabin right then, and figures he'll know where the mine is from there. But Charlie just wants to be with Ginger. Fortunately, Big Jim is much stronger and carries him out of the tavern. They get back to the cabin, but there's another storm and this one blows the cabin partially off a cliff, then there's "wacky" hijinks, where they almost fall off the cliff and keep titling the cabin like a seesaw and finally they get out and find the mine and then they're millionaires.
They get on a boat heading back to America all dressed up fancy and whatnot, and Ginger is also on the boat and Charlie sees her while dressed in his old mining clothes for a photo-op, and she thinks he's a stowaway and offers to pay his fare, and that makes him realize that she's not pure evil so he reveals that he's rich and now he has the girl, the money, and everything, even though she was a total bitch so whatever.
Review: I don't know. This just isn't funny to me. I really admire the fact that just like last time, there's a real attempt to tell a full story here with lots of depth and pathos, but just like last time, even at 80 minutes, there's a ton of filler. This could've been a really good 30 minute short. And while Charlie is clearly gifted in the way he can move his body (in a way that Harpo most emphatically is not) it's still not really funny. Just interesting. Like watching a circus performer. But have you ever watched a circus act and been impressed for any more than ten minutes or so afterwards? There's a reason why this sort of performance art doesn't exist anymore, I think. It's just not that great.
Stars: Two and a half out of five.
Next, two enduring classics that I've somehow managed to never see (yet feel as if I have): "Rocky" and then "Jaws". Just when you thought it was safe to blah blah blah blah joke.
"Charlie Chaplin was very lonely. That Tramp, too much of a sad sack. Laurel & Hardy, they were better, except Hardy was so mean to Laurel. I hated that."
ReplyDelete- Roger Sterling, Mad Men