1928 / 71 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I have sang the praises of Buster Keaton once before on this site. But since there are a lack of people out there singing his praises, allow me to do so once again. Buster was a comic genius who influenced our culture probably more than we will ever realize. No less than Orson Welles, the director of what is generally regarded as the best movie ever made, counted him among his influences.

The least we can do is watch his films.

While “Steamboat Bill Jr.” doesn’t quite have the same energy level as “The General” (few movies do) it does boast what is probably Buster’s most famous stunt. Buster is going through a small, Southern town in the middle of a fierce storm. Buildings are falling down right and left, ships are sinking, and Buster is smack dab in the middle of it. He is standing in the middle of the street when suddenly the front of a house falls over, right on top of Buster. But, instead of being crushed, the window of the building falls where he stands, passing right over him and leaving him unscathed.

I mean, Wow!

I have read a few articles about this film and have learned that this stunt was potentially so dangerous that the film’s crew would have nothing to do with it. They did not want to be on hand if it went wrong and ended up killing Buster. But Buster went and did it anyway, without a crew. Now there is a man who puts it on the line for his craft.

In the film, Buster plays the title character, the son of a Southern riverboat captain whose business has just been taken by a rich man who owns everything else in town. The old man has fallen on hard times and now his son is coming to visit. At first, Steamboat Bill Sr. is overjoyed.

Then he meets his son. Junior arrives wearing a fruity outfit, a beret and a pencil-thin moustache that looks much like the one worn by John Waters. Needless to say, the old man is mortified. The man’s first mate on the ship hands him a gun and says (in a title card, of course): “No jury in the world would convict you”.

Junior’s attempts to win his father’s affections, not to mention the affections of a fetching young lady who happens to be the daughter of his father’s rival, constitute the majority of “Steamboat Bill Jr.”. And the gags do come quite consistently. There is a charming moment in which his father teaches him how to fight, a very funny scene in which he tries to learn how to operate the steamboat, and the climax that involves a hurricane that uproots a tree that Buster is clinging to for dear life and sends it floating through the air like a helicopter.

And through it all, we are carried along by Buster’s fearless desire to entertain and his wonderful, underplayed charm. The genius of Buster Keaton’s physical comedy, as opposed to the physical comedy of most other comedians, is that it is so subtle. He plays against the ludicrousness of the situation with that stone-faced expression of his. Most physical comedy is preposterous. It is the throwing of a pie, a man morphing into another personality, a man beating the crap out of himself, the battering ram energy of the Three Stooges. Those are all great.

But Buster’s form of physical comedy is more subtle than that, and it is something you don’t see that often, if ever.

By the way, wasn’t the first Mickey Mouse cartoon named “Steamboat Willie”? Coincidence? Or was it another of Buster’s little donations to our cultural soup? You decide.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 1999 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.