ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Nonureva Really Surprised!

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

evanston_dad Buster Keaton just wants to take his family out on a pleasant boat trip to enjoy some sea breezes and sunshine. A simple enough request, no? Well if you've ever seen a Buster Keaton movie, you already know the answer to that question....A pretty funny short that involves many of the pratfalls you would expect in a slapstick comedy about a doomed boating expedition -- people falling in the water (a lot), a dinner preparation gone all wrong when nothing is tied down, a storm and its predictable outcome on our beleaguered hero. A cute twist at the end reveals that our protagonist family was never in any danger to begin with.The name of Keaton's boat is the Damfino, which provides a running joke and gives the film its final punchline.

jldmp1 This is not a bad short film...it's just not a cinematic one. Not everything we see here can exclusively be expressed in the film medium.On the other hand, there are some first rate sight gags. Buster is placed in this is as a 'builder', who destroys things far more often than he creates them. Hole in the side of the boat? Nail a pancake over it. Pancake falls off and springs a leak? Drill a hole in the floor for 'drainage'. Your boat capsizes over and over? Nail your shoes to the boards. Who sent the distress signal? "Dam f i no!" The rotating boat gag is extremely influential; the 'zero gravity' scenes in "2001" can claim lineage from this. But the gags only work as isolated events; nothing really ties this all together, and therein lies the movie's weakness.

MartinHafer This is a very good Buster Keaton silent comedy short from 1921. However, unlike most of his other films where he is either co-starring with another guy (such as Fatty Arbuckle) or going solo, in this case everything he does, he does with the family in tow.Buster and his wife are building a boat in the garage. Unfortunately, it's much larger than the opening and so Buster is forced to cut the garage door opening larger. You discover it still isn't large enough as the boat rips the entire side of the house off and destroys most of the home. Now THAT'S a sight gag! Once out of the house, dopey Buster doesn't fare much better. He manages to lose his car off the end of the dock, and later once they've been at sea a while, the boat sinks but our family somehow survives.The movie excels because it has a real plot--it's not just slapstick. Also, the stunts, when they are done, are BIG and very impressive!

Servo-11 While I love everything Keaton did, I particularly like his short comedies the best. They're packed full of gags and it's always an endless laugh riot from beginning to end. The Boat is one of my favorites, along with The Scarecrow and One Week. Keaton's brusque treatment of his children in this short speaks to my heart since I'm not very fond of children, either. The gag where he measures the temperature of the water before jumping in to save his kid from drowning is priceless and I never cease to laugh. This short is also an early example of Keaton's ability to take one prop and base a whole story around it, a la The General. Sybil Seeley is also excellent as his patient wife and her performances in Keaton's other shorts are equally delightful.