Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

William Samuel There has never been another actor like Buster Keaton. Others have come close, but none have truly matched his level of physical comedy. And certainly no one else has performed this brand of acting while also directing and writing his own gags. He was and is one of Hollywood's all time greatest stars and filmmakers. And Steamboat Bill Jr. is one of his best works.The story is interchangeable with dozens of other silent comedies. Young man travels to meet father who he has not seen since childhood. Father is not impressed with son. Young man meets love of his life, but their fathers, who are bitter rivals, forbid them to see each other. Old man faces serious legal and/or financial trouble. No points for guessing that the young man will save both his father and the girl from a great peril, or that love will triumph in the end.So it's entirely predictable from beginning to end, but it doesn't matter. We know going in that the plot is little more than a thread to hang the jokes from. We came simply to laugh and be entertained. And rest assured, you will be entertained.Keaton is in full form here, delivering all his now-classic gags. He comes off as a naive innocent and a clumsy oaf, whose every action results in delightful mayhem. When shown the boiler room on his father's steamboat, he of course leans against the wrong lever and rear ends their competitor's boat. His late night attempt to visit his girlfriend inevitably leaves him in the drink. And from the moment I saw his ukulele, I knew it was destined to be destroyed I comic fashion.What makes this material work is that despite their broadness, Keaton's mishaps do seem to be accidents. We never get the sense that he's deliberately being clumsy to make sure we get the joke. In most movies today, many of these gags would be only mildly amusing at best, and quickly become repetitive, yet that doesn't happen here. I wonder if that's because silent film is such a different medium from modern talkies, and creates a different mindset in viewers. Or perhaps it's Keaton's ability to play the material completely strait. He wasn't called the "Stone Face of Comedy" for nothing.And what elevates Steamboat Bill above even Keaton's other works is the fantastic storm sequence. He out-mimes even Marcel Marceau here, pushed along by an imaginary wind, and bending so far forward that we wonder what keeps him from falling down. And the effects are incredible for their time. Buildings collapse or are picked up as though they were doll houses. Keaton at one point clings to an oak tree, and both he and the oak are lifted into the air and deposited in the river. I was at a complete loss to explain how they created many of these effects, the level of technology being what it was.The most amazing scene however, was not an effect at all. The iconic shot of a wall falling on Keaton, who is unharmed because he is standing in the path of an open window, is exactly what it looks like. They actually dropped a two-ton wall on the star, and if he had been more than a few inches off, he could easily have been killed. You just don't see devotion like that today.

Steve Pulaski Steamboat Bill, Jr. follows the likes of William Canfield, Sr. (Ernest Torrence), the owner and captain of a dilapidated boat he is itching to get back on the water. Canfield's only skeleton in his closet is that he has not seen his son since he was an infant, but is anxiously awaiting his return from college, hoping that his presumably-manly son will be able to help him construct an exceptional river-ride to compete with his businessman next door John King (Tom McGuire), who has just bought a luxurious new boat for himself. The arrival of Canfield's son is disappointing to him as his son turns out to be a scrawny, awkward kid equipped with a pencil mustache, a ukulele, and a beret. Also to his dismay is the fact that Canfield's kid is in love with Kitty King (Marion Byron), the daughter of John. Now, Canfield Sr. must find a way to get his wimpy son to help in out in his greatest time of need when it comes to fixing his boat, but also assisting him in weather a violent cyclone that's been a-brewing.Canfield Jr. is played by Buster Keaton, who really needs no introduction. Keaton is a marvelous actor, who can go from side-splitting comic relief to playing deeply tragic and emotionally-affecting in no time. With Steamboat Bill, Jr., he gives another performance that makes him worthy of placement amongst comedy greats of this era, from The Three Stooges, to Charlie Chaplin, to Harold Lloyd, to the Marx Brothers, to Laurel and Hardy, etc. He's an actor with impeccable timing and wit, and him playing a scrawny but not entirely hopeless underdog is a role that he fits perfectly.Keaton also isn't shy when it comes to finding ways to incorporate breakneck physical comedy into the picture. Consider the scene when Canfield Jr. is being pushed back and forth between his dad's boat and King's boat, each time running a bit more of a risk of falling into the small little crevasse of water between the two boats. The scene is hilarious and keeps one on the edge as if watching an argument taking place between two people right alongside a swimming pool. You know something is coming and the effect is had on you is surprisingly very stimulating.Another memorable scene possibly stands as Keaton's most famous scene of his career, taking place during the destructive cyclone. Keaton's Canfield Jr. is position in front of a home when the front wall of his house falls, ostensibly about the crush him, until we see that Canfield Jr. is in the setup's only safe position, which is where the wall's window is placed. This scene was famously unrehearsed, due to Keaton's trust of his special effects team and his lack of interest in wasting a perfectly good wall.Directed by Charles Reisner, the man responsible for bringing us Chaplin's The Kid just a few years prior, Steamboat Bill, Jr. is also regarded as one of Keaton's best pieces of work, although initially a box office bomb and subject to a critical divide. Because Keaton was independently financing all of his films up until this point, Steamboat Bill, Jr.'s failure was a crushing blow to the director's ego and pocketbook, which tempted him to sign on with MGM to get a heavy studio salary along with more exposure and stronger odds on a successful box office performance. Despite the warnings from his contemporaries and good friends such as Chaplin and Lloyd, Keaton, out of financial desperation, signed on with MGM in a move he'd later regard as one of the worst decisions of his life, as his creative control and personal say in projects was hugely compromised. Viewing Steamboat Bill, Jr. now is a sweet experience, but one can't help but shake their head in sadness for what it entailed for its star, who probably couldn't foresee the legacy he would leave on cinema as a whole.Starring: Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Tom McGuire, and Marion Byron. Directed by: Charles Reisner.

IMDBcinephile For me, Buster Keaton is a very subjective clown. He is third, for me, to both Chaplin and Lloyd. Whether you like him or not, he is undeniably instrumental, not just in the way of farce and so on, but also in the way films were crafted and designed. Look at "The Cameraman" 1928, which is what I usually consider to be his magnum opus; he proves that the disillusioned camera shots and works of art are made completely inadvertently and that they're made with sufficient heart to really breath in our own personal passions for what we anticipate to show on screen - and it could be our personal statement or just our frame of mind - however way, it's still done without a lot of intent. Just like what Keaton done in the stunt department and of course in "The General" and his earlier shorts where in one of them he feel right into the water, "Steamboat Bill Jnr." made in 1928, which bears a similar name to "Steamboat Mickey", is a prominent example of his exposure to folly and his way of pinning down on jokes spot on, while he essentially puts himself in situations that he crawls out of, either harmed or not, stoically.That's one of the things about Keaton; he doesn't blow up like what Mack Sennet would have done. He is a well collected and cordial fellow, who just happens to be clumsy. In "Steamboat Bill, Jnr." he plays William, who has sent a letter to his Father who works on a boat. The beginning they wonder if he's going to be very tall or not, which is of course poking fun at Keaton being extremely small and if you're not familiar with Keaton during the viewing of it, it doesn't tickle you as much. So basically, his Father tries to suit him up when he comes down to work on the deck of his ship - and on his ship a lot of predicaments take place, where he doesn't seem to be accepted. He falls in love Kitty King, and it develops as the movie goes on. The folly is shown in this movie, through a sequence of bad decisions and klutzy ways that Keaton acts, as he tries to keep a straight face and successfully does. His Father in the picture is a really recalcitrant character, and he is also what contrasts with William in that sense. A lot of the folly and what is funny is the fact that the movie is the basis of simple things and times - it's a charming movie as well, and it can be really exuberant to watch. The beginning might make you laugh heartily and then near the end it might make you pour your heart out for Keaton. Either way, the story is really basic and it's really Keaton that safes the picture with his screen presence.I highly recommend it. I don't want to give much away about the movie because it will entice you long enough to really appreciate what it's going for and making ephemera feel greatly important.

classicsoncall This is probably the only movie on the IMDb where most of the positive reviewers have the film rated below it's overall average. I find myself pretty much in the same category; for me individual scenes stand out but the picture overall seemed almost tedious. However I can admire Keaton's creativity for putting it together the way he did. A genius at comic timing, you probably won't find a better choreographed disaster than the famous falling wall gag. The hat shuffle is also quite amusing, but the most entertaining I thought was the cleverly done uprooted tree in flight with Keaton hanging on for dear life. In between the high spots though, the story seemed to lag at times as the father/son relationship got tiring, and the potential romance with Miss Kitty King (Marion Byron) didn't really bloom in any meaningful way. The most amazing thing about the picture had to be Keaton's amazing athleticism in clambering about the Stonewall Jackson and the way he physically resisted the gale force winds. With no stunt double and literally inches from disaster with one false move, I now have an admiration for Keaton's craft that will have me seek out additional films in which he appears.