In Pool Sharks, the debut for WC Fields back when he was doing vaudeville halls, he and another guy, who have a quasi-Three Stooges sort of relationship (one will tend to knock the other over the head if he gets out of line, and usually from Fields, who has a ridiculous and laughably in a good way bad fake mustache, it's funnier him hitting the other guy) as they try to court a girl at a lunch and then play a game of pool that involves... uh, them doing such spectacular pool moves that the balls go into stop-motion spins and at one point Fields is so good that the balls fly off the table on to the rack! This is very silly and yet it goes by so quickly that you don't have too much time to think about it.
I found the comedy to be stronger when it was more character based, such as that opening lunch scene at the table (even Fields just knocking a kid off from his chair to get a seat is funny), and when it gets to the main part in the pool room it's actually not as funny. There's a few laughs, but mostly it's watching these billiard balls going in their slow stop motion ways. But the last couple of minutes redeem it by it going back to Fields and the other guy beating the crap out of each other and getting into shenanigans (i.e. a ball flies out the window and breaks a fishbowl over a woman's head, as she has to pick fish out of her hair!)
I'd watch it again, but it mostly gets by on the charm on its lead - which, of course, is massive and Fields' don't-give-a-damn attitude is present even without dialog - and it doesn't have the brilliance of a Lloyd/Keaton/Chaplin kind of deal. It's coarser and rougher around the edges, but the filmmaking is always fine and is so snappy in how it goes from one beat to the next that it allows for the comedy to find a rhythm where a joke or gag will come if something else falls flat.
I found the comedy to be stronger when it was more character based, such as that opening lunch scene at the table (even Fields just knocking a kid off from his chair to get a seat is funny), and when it gets to the main part in the pool room it's actually not as funny. There's a few laughs, but mostly it's watching these billiard balls going in their slow stop motion ways. But the last couple of minutes redeem it by it going back to Fields and the other guy beating the crap out of each other and getting into shenanigans (i.e. a ball flies out the window and breaks a fishbowl over a woman's head, as she has to pick fish out of her hair!)
I'd watch it again, but it mostly gets by on the charm on its lead - which, of course, is massive and Fields' don't-give-a-damn attitude is present even without dialog - and it doesn't have the brilliance of a Lloyd/Keaton/Chaplin kind of deal. It's coarser and rougher around the edges, but the filmmaking is always fine and is so snappy in how it goes from one beat to the next that it allows for the comedy to find a rhythm where a joke or gag will come if something else falls flat.