Buster Keaton: Vol. 1-2

Buster Keaton: Vol. 1-2
Buster Keaton revisits his familiar persona of a spoiled society dandy thrown into the surreal world. Young millionaire Rollo Treadway (the sap in the family tree, according to a title card) embarks on a long voyage to nurse his broken heart when his lady love, Kathryn McGuire, turns down his proposal of marriage. Of course he winds up on the wrong dock and boards a derelict ship, which (as luck would have it) McGuire has also boarded. Foreign spies set the ship adrift on the high seas, stranding the pampered heirs, who must now fend for themselves. Keaton indulges in his love of Rube Goldberg contraptions with an elaborate jungle of levers and hatches that turns a giant galley into a veritable automat and dives into 20th-century technology when he dons a diving suit for a hilarious underwater sequence. McGuire makes a marvelous comic partner for Keaton, a gifted physical comedian and a spunky love interest, while the ship plays straight man to their pratfalls and gags, practically coming alive like a haunted house in their first terrified night aboard. The match between man and massive machine proved so successful that Keaton returned to the concept for his two greatest comedies, The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. Also featured are a pair of appropriately aquatic shorts: The Boat, in which Buster packs his family into a leaky houseboat, and The Love Nest, which pits castaway Buster against a despotic captain. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Review: Better Than The General
I must admit that I found the Navigator superior in yuks and charm to The General made by Keaton three years later. The General usually gets the accolades, but I disagree. There is wonderful romantic-comic chemistry between Kathryn McGuire and Buster as they share hardship stranded on the ship, The Navigator. He's a rich guy sans servants and she's the rich girl; sans daddy and servants. Together they learn how to cook and keep from drowning in the adventure of their lives. The story builds as they learn how to open cans of food, swim , and avoid a tropical village of cannibals while adrift all alone on an old freighter in the middle of the Pacific. A wonderful script really. No words are needed.
Customer Review: The Navigator
This is the first Buster Keaton film I ever saw and instilled my liking for his comedies. With "The General", it is one of the two of his better films, each of which have an individual character. His comedies are arguably as good as, if not better, than those of Charlie Chaplin, which tend to introduce elements of pathos. Buster Keaton, in each film, has novel ideas and his acrobatics are marvellous.