The Bell Boy

Audience Reviews

View All (5) audience reviews

sean l Now filming in Los Angeles, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton occupy familiar roles: twin slackers working menial day jobs, and doing so very poorly. In this instance, they're a pair of hotel clerks, responsible for scrubbing floors and toting luggage, but also trimming beards and operating heavy machinery. As always, there's a girl involved - object of immediate attention and intense competitive interest - who serves as spark to a set of climactic fireworks. Arbuckle gives us an entertaining skit involving the barber's chair (transforming a ghastly bearded man into several famous political figures) while Keaton absent-mindedly humiliates an upper-class gentleman with his mop, but the story is scattered and disorganized until the closing moments. That's when the duo (along with their constant supporting man, Al St. John) get mixed up in a bank robbery and literally tear the place down. When it's all over and done with, we find that the bank's in ruins, the hotel ballroom is missing a wall, paper money is casually fluttering through the streets and one of our stars has finally, decisively scored the girl. A big finish for what had otherwise been a rather low-key, by-the-numbers effort. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member The Bell Boy (1918) Staring Roscoe Arbuckle & Buster Keaton It is a Slap stick comedy with a lot of tricks. I like the scene in the barber shop where they change a hair style from looking like Russian Rasputin to Ulysses S Grant, to Abram Lincoln to a Civil War figure by cutting the hair. It is crazy seeing an elevator functioning with horses to pull the elevator up and down the different floors. I was unaware that some elevators back in the day functioned that way. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/01/20 Full Review Audience Member Buster and Fatty work as bell boys at a third-rate motel and lodge and deal with scary customers, a beautiful woman, and a bank robbery. Quite possibly their best short together. If not, it's certainly one of the funniest. Buster is more of Fatty's co-star in this picture, unlike their other films where Buster has a small role. In this film, Buster gets to display his incredible talent as a pantomime and a stuntman, with some ingenious gags (the window wiping scene? Yes!) that only Buster could have pulled off. Or so I thought. One of the underrated actors in Fatty's troupe was Al St. John. He appeared in almost all their films, and he somehow managed to hold his own against Buster in this film, both as a comedian and stuntman. The Bell Boy is funny, silly, and loads of fun. The story's not that great, and there's nothing else that really makes this film worth watching aside from the great humor. Even so, The Bell Boy won't disappoint. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Audience Member What a wacky hotel they're running in this movie! This short is really funny, full of good jokes and gags. A must-see. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member another funny silent with comedy duo keaton & fatty. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Bell Boy

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW