6/10
Arbuckle in full force
30 April 2019
Warning: Spoilers
"Buzzin' Around" is an American black-and-white live sction short film from 1933 that runs for under 20 minutes and features silent film legend Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in one of his later works. Goulding, henley and Lambert were those in charge of script and direction and even if they were very prolific back in the day, there's probably not too many that know them today still. But mentioning their names despite them being listed on here on imdb anyway is something they deserve. But of course, this film is all about Arbuckle other than that, even if Al St. John, another icon from his era is also on board. At least as interesting as the cast in here is the sound as the year (over 85 years ago) of course makes it obvious that this was still the early days of sound film and there are some pretty fun inclusions of sound effects that make this film better than many other sound movies from around that time that looked a bid shoddy and rusty frequently. By the way the title of this one here could very well stem from a cartoon by WB or so if we look at the year. It sure sounds like that. But it is not. Instead of being part of the Golden Age of Amination back then, it is one of the finest works by Arbuckle and I was well entertained here on quite a few occasions. One highlight would be the long ending sequence when the protagonist thinks he brought along his magic invention, but sadly there has been a mix-up, so he keeps breaking one priceless vase/artefact after the next. It has been a while since I laughed that much during a black-and-white (short) film I think. Had this level been there also in the slightly underwhelming middle part, then this would have been a truly great film. But the way it actually turned out, it is still fairly solid I would say. Arbuckle shows that he much more than a mere silent film star, even if admittedly he looked a bit too much like Hardy here at times, especially when they put a Laurel lookalike right next to him. I think you might wanna check this one out, also to see one of the really rare inclusion of bees (and sports teams being the victim of these bees) in old movies. Go for it!
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