The Rounders (1914)

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. He did do better than 'The Rounders', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'The Rounders' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch. 'The Rounders' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The episodic story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy, occasionally repetitive and confused.For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'The Rounders' is not bad at all, pretty good actually. While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with shades of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Fatty Arbuckle is also great and their chemistry carries 'The Rounders' to very entertaining effect.Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'The Rounders' is still very amusing, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.To conclude, decent. 7/10 Bethany Cox

The Rounders (1914) *** (out of 4) Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle show up separately at their homes where they take a beating from their wives. The two eventually bump into one another in more way than one and decide to go out together but of course the nagging wives follow. THE ROUNDERS is far from a classic movie and the truth is that's it's barely even a good one. With that said, it's impossible not to at least enjoy seeing the two comic legends working together and both of them delivering nice performances. As far as the comedy goes, it's very hit and miss because the majority of the times we're just getting the same gags over and over. The two drunks stumble around, knock things over and they each get hit a lot. This pretty much happens throughout the entire running time and their drunk level seems to change from one scene to the next. I still thought Chaplin and Arbuckle had some fine chemistry working together and this is show during the scenes where the two are trying to hold each other up and walk at the same time. This is certainly far from their best work but it's still worth watching.

Chaplin again teams up with Fatty Arbuckle as drunks who argue with their wives in separate hotel rooms. The two comedians play drunks as well as anyone before or since. Minta Durfee, Fatty's real life wife at the time, plays his wife here. The spouses go at it quite a bit before Charlie checks out the commotion next door to find Fatty in the same situation he's in. Charlie and Fatty become fast friends and steal away to the hotel's restaurant while the wives argue with each other. Once in the restaurant, sight gags follow and then the wives. In minutes the whole restaurant is up in arms and Charlie and Fatty run off to get away stealing a boat in the process. The ending is grand. Look closely for Charley Chase in the restaurant. ** of 4 stars.

This is a film from Chaplin's first year in films. During this VERY hectic year, he churned out film after film after film for Keystone Studios and the quality of the films are, in general, quite poor. That's because the character of "the Little Tramp" was far from perfected and the films really had no script--just the barest of story ideas. While some Chaplin lovers might think this is sacrilege, all these movies I have seen are pretty lousy. Yes, there are some cute slapstick moments but barely any plot--absolutely NOTHING like the Chaplin we all came to love in his full-length films of the 20s and 30s.This movie pairs Chaplin with Fatty Arbuckle. They drink and punch and fall down a lot. That's really all there is to this film. Content-wise, it's a big fat zero.