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 MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! THE KID, STARRING CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND JACKIE COOGAN (1921)

OK, I will admit that I went into this one just knowing that I was going to hate it if only because of Charlie Chaplin's status as some sort of comedic ideal that frankly hasn't been relevant to anything for years. Yeah I know as Brad Kohler would have said, I don't have to hate Chaplin just because Dick Cavett likes him but still, after all of the reams of sensitive retrospectives regarding the man's films and the fact that he was such a living god as far as cinema and comedy went to the point where he was allowed to make unfunny films for years after his shelf life expired...well things like that kinda do somethin' to a fella like me and not exactly in a positive way. All of that sophisticated NEW YORKER spin on the guy we've had to endure for years makes me want to eschew anything related to Chaplin even if it is his very early work at the Keystone studios. At least that was an era which I'll admit was the only period of the guy's career I wouldn't mind being front and center for if any film retrospectives would happen to be playing 'round these here parts.

After letting loose of all of my anti-Chaplin prejudices (at least temporarily) I decided to dive head first into this much lauded feature of his and---uh---well, maybe this film wasn't the art house beret and stale Doritos affair I sure thought it would be!  It wasn't anything that I would praise to high heaven hallelujah and hosanna-style true, but I managed to sit through the entire film while being able to eke out some enjoyment which is more than I can say about some of the current offal passing as cutting edge entertainment I may have caught a glimpse of.

THE KID is undoubtedly an early-twenties dish-it-out comedy/melodrama typical of the time, the kind of film that would soon go out of style by the end of the decade when the old guard would get wooshed away with a crop of new stars reducing 'em all to supporting roles in some East Side Kids film. It begins with a young woman, played by longtime Chaplin somethingorother Edna Purviance, being released from the Home for Unwed Mothers  carrying her new package so-to-speak into an uncertain world. Boy can you see all of the heartstring-tugging that went into that opening...I guess people felt sorry for sluts and bastards even way back a century ago. Anyway Purviance, in a fit of conflicting emotions, leaves the little stranger in the back of some ritzy limo which gets swiped, and when the culprits discover the turdling in the back they do the right thing, mainly drop it in a decrepit alleyway right next to the garbage. But as you and everyone else watching this would expect, Purviance has a change of heart and wants her bundle of not-so-joy back but hey, it's too late sister. Anyway it serves you right dumping the thing in the first place!

Now's the part where Chaplin, once again ramming his little tramp persona into the ground, finds the baby and after trying to pawn him off and even considering tossing him down the sewer does the worst thing imaginable and raises the foundling himself. Five years later the kid turns out to be budding child star Jackie Coogan and of course the two get into the usual romps and tumbles (including the old one where Coogan breaks windows and Chaplin steps in to repair them gag), all culminating in the scene where the welfare agency takes the kid away in what I guess is a real tearjerker of a scene given how a whole slew of documentaries love showing it repeatedly.  Everything eventually come to the kind of a head you would expect from a 1921 silent film custom made to make the sophisticados chitchat over while the suburban slobs have a good laff at all the pratfalls they've been seeing from Chaplin for a good seven years already.

Overall it ain't a bad film, but there's a slick veneer of art and culture here that might have worked with DW Griffith although with Chaplin it all seems too "Victorian" and perhaps what I would call "stilted". Like its trying way too hard to elicit the proper emotions which might have worked with some, but definitely not with me or undoubtedly even you. I mean, I am a guy who is still wowed and devastated by Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS in my own cornball aw shucks way, but I had a real hard time enjoying the gags and felt no emotion for Chaplin, Coogan or Purviance...sheesh, but I probably couldn't have cared less what happens to the protagonists who could have fallen off a cliff for all I care.

Let's face it, despite what all of you aging film buffs and pointy-heads believe in your black heart of hearts, by this time in his career Chaplin was bigger than life and him making THE KID was pretty much akin to John Lennon recording IMAGINE...that was a rather middling album with a few downright turdburgers tossed in (if there were any enjoyable tracks on that one I'm not sure...it was so long since I last heard it) but who other than some fanzine punks or maybe some gonzoid writer of the day would want to go out on a cliff and admit it?

When it comes to silent era comedic pathos I'll take a short like MOVE ALONG that was released by Educational Pictures a good five years later. This one starred a way lesser known comedian, Lloyd Hamilton who was great at playing a flubdub-like character, and who out there in readerland who hadda search for work mostly in vain and on the point of vagrancy couldn't jibe with the frustration (humorous at that) which the down and out Hamilton goes through in this picture trying to survive. I dunno 'bout you, but I find MOVE ALONG a film that succeeds with all of the button pushing that THE KID does, only way better because it doesn't come off like it's trying to be Tiffany's. More or less the bargain basement where all the real good items can be found.

Even the dream sequences seen in both films are an important filmic lesson...the one in THE KID had nothing to do with the plot and only works for me because we get to see Chaplin tempted by the oh-so-obviously underage Lita Grey who I'd bet was doing the dirty deed with Chaplin even then long before he eventually knocked her up good and hard a good four years later. At least the dream sequence in MOVE ALONG works as an essential part of the story showing Hamilton and the woman he loves from afar in a brief oasis from a life of downright frustration. Find out for yourself whether I'm once again on-target or flopping like a fish out of its elements since I posted both films below...as the old saying goes, YOU be the judge and knowing you guys well, have you never NOT missed an opportunity to cut me way down to size like you've all been doing lo these many years?