Customer Reviews

Free & Easy [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Overall, this is not exactly "College" or "Seven Chances," but it has some good moments.

The other posters have given good summaries of the overall "plot" or lack thereof, but the individual moments of the Bus-man do stand out. The scene where during the studio cop chases Bus, our hero sits on a dynamite plunger with the obvious results is a howl. Bus' song and dance "Free and Easy" (thus the title) is quite amusing, as one rarely sees our man in a song-and-dance setting.

The scene where the director tries to give Bus some vocal coaching, that results in a routine that predates "Who's On First" is a bit odd for the Bus man. Buster is funny because of his reactions to his surroundings, not because he is stupid, so this scene is sort of a let down, as is the previously described ending, which leaves the viewer with a nasty aftertaste.

So this is largey a mixed bag, interesting mainly for historical reasons. It's important to remember that generally speaking, movies from 1929-30 were still in a transition period from silents to sound, so films from that era (like this) seem very stilted and awkward to modern audiences.

Buster Keaton's first talking picture was Free & Easy; and this movie also stars Anita Page, Trixie Friganza and a young Robert Montgomery. The movie is like an airplane that taxies down the runway and then stops short suddenly, never taking off. What we get is mediocre material and after the first 40 minutes or so of this movie I started looking at my watch rather frequently.

The action starts when Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page) and her mother Ma Plunkett (Trixie Friganza) are boarding a train from Kansas to Hollywood. Elvira just won a local beauty contest and her half baked manager Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton) almost doesn't get to the train on time with their tickets! Elvira hopes that with Elmer's help she can break into the motion picture industry as an American sweetheart.

On the train the Plunketts are finally reunited with Elmer who has their tickets just in time to avoid their being thrown off the train. They also meet a young movie star Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery), who is going to Hollywood for a premiere of his new movie and to shoot another film as well.

Larry offers to help Elvira get into pictures; and with Elmer also trying to help Elvira get into movies the "comedy" begins. Much of what we get is little more than slapstick. We see Elmer being chased all around the MGM studio by security guards and when Larry Mitchell takes responsibility for Elmer I was relieved that those silly chase scenes were over. We also see Elmer and Ma Plunkett get chances at being in films themselves!

Of course, what happens next is anybody's guess. Will Elvira herself make it into movies? What if Elmer and Larry both fall in love with Elvira? Will Ma Plunkett ever give Elmer any credit for helping Elvira? No spoilers here--you'll just have to watch the movie to find out!

The choreography really shows a lot of forethought in the scenes at MGM that have a movie being filmed within this movie; and the fight scene at Larry's apartment shows good planning as well.

Overall, I can't say that Buster Keaton's first "talkie" was his best movie ever. Actually, it's far from his best. The actors do their best with what little they were given in that awful script; and I would recommend to Buster Keaton fans that they save this film for a time when they've already watched his better movies. Anita Page and Trixie Friganza are well cast even though their parts are not especially deep; and poor Robert Montgomery cringes through a scene in which he must sing on screen. Ouch!

Three stars. Sorry, folks!

Buster's first sound picture involves him being appointed as manager of a beauty contest winner from Gopher City, Kansas. He travels to Hollywood with her and her mother (who treats him like junk) with the purpose of getting her into the movies. He's in love with her, but she meets a movie star on the train ride out and instead falls in love with him.

There are two parts to this movie. The first half has an almost documentary feel to it, basically because of MGM's primitive use of sound in its infancy at that time, coupled with Buster's natural, unphony dialogue spoken in a charmingly deep mid-western accent that must have caused 1930 audiences to gasp after hearing it for the first time. There are scenes so natural of Buster trying to explain himself out of trouble and one where he's unsuccessfully trying to park his rented car in Hollywood parking lots that make the viewers feel like they're watching Buster's real life, instead of a scripted movie. The first half shows a lot of Buster being chased by a movie studio cop, slapped at, yelled at, roughed up, beaten, and generally being treated like he's the most disrespected person on the planet.

The second half is interesting because 1930 audiences got to see Buster use his musical comedy gifts for the first time. Buster gets to play the part of a king in a comic opera. He sings, he dances. He's good at it. Although the musical sequences are kind of hokey by today's standards, I think they were pretty much what audiences at that time were getting from the Broadway stage, radio, and vaudeville, and MGM was desperate to make up for lost time with the arrival of sound films by displaying them here. In one comic sequence, after Buster walks across a soundstage on a camel, he gets off the camel and mumbles "I'd walk a mile to get that, too". This line will leave a 21st century audience questioning the meaning of that phrase, but in the 1920's, there was a popular advertising campaign for Camel cigarettes in which everyone in their ads was saying "I'd walk a mile for a Camel".

Film critics would not rank "Free and Easy" as high as Buster's classic silent features, but I like it about as much as any of those.

Here is a pretty good early movie musical-comedy with silent comic Buster Keaton quite good but lovely blonde bombshell Anita Page is even better. Also a wonderful vaudeville comedienne named Trixie Frananza is hilarious in a rare film appearance as Anita's boisterious mom in a parody of stage mothers.

"Free and Easy" (1930) is a poorly conceived "talkie" debut for Buster Keaton. This dreadful MGM musical-comedy desecrates Keaton's talents - the studio even has him wear clown makeup. Except for Buster's singing and dancing, there is not a memorable moment in the film. Though Keaton's MGM talkies were a mixed bag, his remaining vehicles did not plummet to the depths of "Free and Easy."