NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "In the Park" is a 14-minute short film from 1915, so this one is already over 100 years old and of course, this makes it a black-and-white silent film. The director here is Charles Chaplin and he is also one of the cast members. But this film focuses on several other characters too and there are many scenes where you see 3 people on the screen, so it's far from a mere Chaplin showcase. But maybe it is just too much for this duration: too many actors, too many plot twists etc. The fact that it is really just one location, namely the one in the title, cannot make up for that. Overall, I also felt that the slapstick comedy here wasn't really great and that there was a great deal of scenes that added almost nothing overall, which is why I think the film even dragged a bit at times. And the problem of lack of enough intertitles, so we know what is going on and actually at least partially understand what they were saying, even if we only get to read 1 out of 10 sentences we see them speaking. I may not be the biggest fan of the silent film greats, but I have seen much better stuff from that era for sure. You really need to dig Chaplin almost to a fanboy/-girl level to see any real value in this quarter of an hour. It's a shamed it turned out so forgettable as the cast includes many prolific and successful actors next to Chaplin. But I give the overall outcome a thumbs-down here. Not recommended.

MartinHafer This is one of 5 Chaplin that are on the first DVD of Chaplin's Essanay Comedies. In general, compared to volume 2, the shorts on volume 1 aren't as well-made--because the DVDs are arranged chronologically. Chaplin's skill as a film maker and actor appeared to improve through his stay with Essanay Studios.This film has very little plot--just slapping and punching. It's like the first five minutes of Chaplin's later Essanay short A WOMAN--but instead of then transitioning to a plot, this film just stays stuck in slapstick mode. Too shallow to have any lasting value and I got very tired of the mean-spirited Chaplin hitting people. This shows little of Chaplin's later genius.

wmorrow59 At one point in the 1930s, a period when Charles Chaplin would spend years making a single feature film, he remarked to a friend that in his early days all he needed was a cop, a park bench, and a pretty girl, and -- Presto! -- he and his crew could crank out a new comedy in a day or two. And indeed, he made so many films that way in 1914 (his year of apprenticeship with Keystone) they're practically interchangeable. Unfortunately, however, he had no control over the handling of these films after he left the company, and most were re-edited, retitled, and mixed up in dizzying ways by distributors out to make a buck. Thus, there are two Chaplin movies known as "In the Park." One is a reissue of a 1914 Keystone comedy originally titled Caught in the Rain, and the other is an Essanay release of the following year. Very little of the Keystone film actually takes place in a park: it's a marital farce involving sleepwalking and drunken bedroom-hopping, set mostly in a hotel. The "real" In the Park is appropriately named, for it has no interior scenes at all.In his films of 1915 Chaplin begins to demonstrate a little more finesse, and his Tramp character is more sympathetic. Even in such a brief and simple film as the Essanay version of In the Park we find a coherent through-line (albeit no plot as such), touches of whimsy, and some cleanly executed physical comedy. The tempo is fairly relaxed and slapstick violence is kept to a minimum, at least compared to the earlier films. While the Tramp is of course the central character, Chaplin also deftly choreographs the movements of his supporting players: a nursemaid, a thief, courting couples, a cop, etc. Charlie has plenty of colorful characters to react to, flirt with, or fight, as the occasion demands.I love Charlie's first scene with Edna the nursemaid, the way he leers at her, plays with his hat, and casually (Harpo-like) plops his leg into her lap. Along with the Keystone style brick-hurling and head-bopping we have Charlie playing with a string of sausages just for the fun of it, while portly Bud Jamison skips about the park like Baby Huey. I like the fact that Edna is given a brief comic moment of her own: she is first seen sitting on a bench, reading a book mysteriously titled "Why They Married." (Well hey, why not?) The other players still wear heavy makeup and emote vigorously, but Chaplin himself is more nuanced and self-assured as a performer, and less frenzied than in some of the earlier films. In the Park is no masterwork, but it does serve to showcase Chaplin's development from diamond-in-the-rough to the supreme comic artist and filmmaker he would soon become.

Michael DeZubiria ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** In The Park starts off with a scene that is very similar to one of Chaplin's other short films, By The Sea, where Charlie comes across a woman who is involved with another man. In this scene, Charlie approaches her and flirts with her while her oafish husband is temporarily away, and when he comes back, an argument ensues that ends with Charlie getting knocked backwards over a park bench. After this, however, the remainder of the film takes place in the apartment building where all three people live, even right across the hall from each other (seems strange that they don't know each other).The thing that really takes away from this film is that there is so much that happens during the film that does not make much sense and is not explained, even in the limited way that is available in a silent film. For example, after having encountered the couple in the beach and after they have stormed off, Charlie staggers back home as though he is drunk, but we never see him drink, other than in an amusing attempt to drink from a water fountain in the park at the beginning of the film. When he gets to the hallway (which can be recognized as the exact same hallway as was seen in another of Chaplin's short comedies, called The Rounders), he accidentally wanders into the wrong room, thinking it's his (maybe it's because that was his room in The Rounders?), and continues with his unexplained drunken behavior. He picks up a bottle, pours something out of it onto his hat, combs his hat briefly, and then drinks from the bottle. Clearly, this is something that is not uncommon to see Chaplin do in one of his films, but we have no idea why he is acting like that.Charlie eventually finds his way back to his own room, undresses at length, and crawls into bed, even though it could not have been more than half an hour since he was in the park, at which point it was broad daylight. As he is about to go to sleep, the other man's wife sleepwalks into his bed, and the better segment of the film follows. It is hilarious to watch Charlie trying to get this man's wife back into her own room without her husband finding out, and the scenes in which this happens are much better than the film as a whole, even though this also leads to more confusion as to what exactly is happening. The police wind up getting involved, and the film seems to end right in the middle of the final conflict. While it's obvious that In The Park does not compare to the high quality of the majority of Chaplin's early silent comedies, the style and the skill are unmistakable. Even though this movie has more than it's share of unfortunate shortcomings, Chaplin's presence alone makes it a very entertaining film.