I especially enjoyed Chaplin’s use of string attached to his
jacket and hat which stops his hat blowing away in the wind. It’s a great idea
and it’s almost a shame it didn’t catch on! The idea is used successfully in a
couple of ways; Firstly in a scene in which Chaplin and Billy Armstrong get
their strings intertwined and end up tangled up and inevitably fighting and in
a second scene while trying to woo Bud Jamison’s wife. In this scene Chaplin
manipulates the string behind his back to make it seem as though the hat is
jumping off his head. It’s a simple, clever and very funny idea.
Apart from those two examples and a brief fight involving
ice creams there isn’t much else of note in this film. There are of course Bud
Jamison’s over the top eyebrows and the background setting of an almost
deserted Los Angeles beach is quite interesting but compared to Chaplin’s later
films this feels a little weak.
5/10
