Keaton Studio, N. Cahuenga Blvd. & Eleanor Ave., Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Buster Keaton, Phyllis Haver, and John Brown in The Balloonatic (1923)

Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox in The Electric House (1922)

Buster Keaton in My Wife's Relations (1922)

Buster Keaton in The Haunted House (1921)

Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely in Convict 13 (1920)

I've come to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.

I don't know. I'll leave for the city to make good. If I'm not a success, I'll come back and shoot myself.

Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, and Harold Lloyd in Pool Sharks (1915)

Buster Keaton

Renée Adorée

Edward F. Cline

Jeffrey Vance

A sincere young man leaves his home to win his fortune so he can marry his home town sweetheart.

Day Dreams

Second-rate Keaton

&quot;Daydreams&quot; is basically a collection of sketches, book-ended by an opening and closing pair of scenes. As such, it has something of the perfunctory feel of a &apos;compilation episode&apos;: the storyline, inasmuch as there is one, consists of Buster exaggerating the status of, trying and failing at a series of lowly jobs, but while the individual episodes vary in humour, they never build into anything greater than the sum of their (rather brief) parts. Films like &quot;Hard Luck&quot; or &quot;The Balloonatic&quot; have the merit of a reasonably coherent progression from one somewhat arbitrary encounter to the next; this one is constrained by the necessity of cutting back to the framing structure, which deprives it of that vital illusion of logic. Whether as a consequence of this or not, the result is not nearly so funny. (The best sequence is possibly a battered Buster&apos;s arrival back on the doorstep of his beloved... at the hands of the US Postal Service!) 

For fans, this is worth watching as ever just in order to see Buster in action, and there are certainly laughs to be had; but it offers little human interest -- this is Inept Buster without the customary redeeming turning of the tables -- and suffers from a lack of his usual narrative inspiration. The humour tends in places towards simple slapstick (Buster squirts a hose, people get wet) rather than the inspired second-guessing of audience expectations at which he excels. The funniest concepts (disguising himself as an inert shopkeeper&apos;s dummy, keeping pace exactly with his pursuers) are echoed in more successful comedies, and sadly the famous paddle-wheel clip is really less impressive when actually seen in the context of the slender plot. This comedy is inoffensive, but not really a showcase for Keaton&apos;s abilities; unlikely to win over any converts, perhaps.

"Daydreams" is basically a collection of sketches, book-ended by an opening and closing pair of scenes. As such, it has something of the perfunctory feel of a 'compilation episode': the storyline, inasmuch as there is one, consists of Buster exaggerating the status of, trying and failing at a series of lowly jobs, but while the individual episodes vary in humour, they never build into anything greater than the sum of their (rather brief) parts. Films like "Hard Luck" or "The Balloonatic" have the merit of a reasonably coherent progression from one somewhat arbitrary encounter to the next; this one is constrained by the necessity of cutting back to the framing structure, which deprives it of that vital illusion of logic. Whether as a consequence of this or not, the result is not nearly so funny. (The best sequence is possibly a battered Buster's arrival back on the doorstep of his beloved... at the hands of the US Postal Service!) 

For fans, this is worth watching as ever just in order to see Buster in action, and there are certainly laughs to be had; but it offers little human interest -- this is Inept Buster without the customary redeeming turning of the tables -- and suffers from a lack of his usual narrative inspiration. The humour tends in places towards simple slapstick (Buster squirts a hose, people get wet) rather than the inspired second-guessing of audience expectations at which he excels. The funniest concepts (disguising himself as an inert shopkeeper's dummy, keeping pace exactly with his pursuers) are echoed in more successful comedies, and sadly the famous paddle-wheel clip is really less impressive when actually seen in the context of the slender plot. This comedy is inoffensive, but not really a showcase for Keaton's abilities; unlikely to win over any converts, perhaps.

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Day Dreams

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