Relying heavily on less-inventive slapstick shenanigans, The Bell Boy is a pretty average Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton Film. It starts with them as hapless bell boys in a hotel that provides "third rate service at first rate prices." Not much of it is memorable, but I liked Arbuckle rather aggressively cutting a man's hair with giant shears. The guy starts off looking like Rasputin, then Arbuckle turns him into a likeness of first U. S. Grant, then Abraham Lincoln, and finally Kaiser Wilhelm, who Arbuckle proceeds to attack. With America having just entered the war, anti-German sentiment was also expressed in a sign saying the hotel offers French and German Cooking, but now the "and German" part is crossed out. Subtle!
Meanwhile, Buster gets in an amusing moment when he's apparently cleaning the window of a phone booth from the inside, but then sticks his head through where the pane should be. He later relives some of his vaudeville days to use a springboard to stand atop Arbuckle's shoulders, as well as acrobatically leap over a succession of walls at a bank. The whole bank caper plot felt less than cohesive and disjoint, however, as if the original idea of being hotel bell boys simply couldn't be exploited further. The film has a few nice moments with the camera, the first being Cutie Cuticle (lol, Alice Lake) being launched atop a mounted stag's head using reverse motion, and the second a long shot of a horse-drawn tram car detaching itself atop a hill with three men inside, then rolling backwards. Overall, it's watchable, but not amazing.
Meanwhile, Buster gets in an amusing moment when he's apparently cleaning the window of a phone booth from the inside, but then sticks his head through where the pane should be. He later relives some of his vaudeville days to use a springboard to stand atop Arbuckle's shoulders, as well as acrobatically leap over a succession of walls at a bank. The whole bank caper plot felt less than cohesive and disjoint, however, as if the original idea of being hotel bell boys simply couldn't be exploited further. The film has a few nice moments with the camera, the first being Cutie Cuticle (lol, Alice Lake) being launched atop a mounted stag's head using reverse motion, and the second a long shot of a horse-drawn tram car detaching itself atop a hill with three men inside, then rolling backwards. Overall, it's watchable, but not amazing.