SHERLOCK JR.

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The second half of this 40-minute masterpiece by Buster Keaton is an extended dream sequence.  It starts with our eponymous hero, who is a film projectionist as well as an amateur detective, entering the film that is showing at the cinema where he works.  

It's a meta idea which Woody Allen could happily get away with in the 1980s in ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ but which was so ahead of its time in 1924 that one imagines that the relatively unsophisticated cinema audiences of the time must have struggled to get their minds around what they were watching, let alone find it funny.


So maybe it is not surprising that this film was a commercial flop.  The film also lacks any of the really spectacular stunts that we might expect from Keaton, but to compensate there is a terrific amount of comic inventiveness on show, especially in the aforementioned dream sequence, which includes a delightful sequence in which Buster falls through various landscapes.  

The film also ends on as fine a visual joke as one could hope to see.

All in all I find this film to be a joy from start to finish.

RATING: ✓✓✓ Absolutely Fabulous

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