The greatest film comedian of all time? Well, if he had made better sound films than this, I think that would have been indisputable. Or as his partner here, one Jimmy Durante, may have put it, "indispicable."
Buster Keaton's transition to sound went over well at the box office. He had some of his biggest hits in talkies, including this one. But watching "Speak Easily" makes you wonder why. It doesn't move like classic Buster. It doesn't make you laugh like classic Buster. It just gives you Buster, playing a fish out of water - too convincingly.
As Professor Post, Buster is urged to leave his lonely sinecure teaching the classics at a fancy college and "go out and find life." Led to believe he has just inherited $750,000, he does so, and meets a troupe of traveling showpeople. Falling in love with one, Pansy Peets (Ruth Selwyn), he decides to take them to Broadway on his dime. Only he doesn't really have as many dimes as he thinks.
There are actually three comedy legends in this film. In addition to Durante, who is the troupe's combination comic and piano player and pretty good here with his miles-of-malaprops-a-minute manner, you have Thelma Todd. People who talk about Buster's tragically curtailed career should take stock of Todd, who died at 29 just as she was poised to take off in an era of funny women. She shows a lot of her realized potential here, as a gold-plated vamp who latches onto Buster when she learns he is putting on the show.
"Have you ever thought seriously of marriage?" she asks Professor Post.
"Yes, that's why I'm single," he replies.
There is also a sequence where Todd's character attempts to blackmail Post by having him caught out in his bedroom, something that could really happen back in the 1930s. This is set up by a beautiful two-hand drunk scene (just watch Todd's reaction after gulping Buster's cocktail!) before moving on to a variation of a routine Buster did many times, trying to carry an unconscious woman to bed, before Durante shows up to give the sequence a terrific capper. The scene is so good it belongs in a much better movie.
Durante isn't overbearingly antic here, but he has little to do except tell lousy jokes and string along the willing professor (whom he calls "that guy with the face") about his dog-and-pony show's prospects. Selwyn's a weak female lead, even with a fourth Hollywood legend, gossip-page pioneer Hedda Hopper, playing her overprotective mother.
Buster is at the center of what's wrong. He's not convincing as a professor, and his comedy mannerisms tend to be slow and obvious. It's been said he struggled in the sound era when MGM tried to make him play sad and sympathetic. There's some of that here (in the beginning Post is warned his lonely condition may drive him to suicide) but also a tentative quality to his line readings, long pauses and repetitious head bobs that may be his famous drinking problem showing up on screen or else just difficulty managing the different demands of talkie comedy.
The film limps along, an occasional funny line or good physical comedy bit standing out all the more for the tedium around it, until reaching an awful finale where the show makes its Broadway debut with assorted mayhem both on- and offstage. Every tired gimmick is trotted out, while Buster overplays Post's idiocy for the sake of some lame slapstick. It's a real wince-producing conclusion that leaves a more sour aftertaste than "Speak Easily" deserves.
People who want to see the worst of Buster will be disappointed with "Speak Easily," though not nearly as much as those who come to it wanting to see more of why he was so great.
Buster Keaton's transition to sound went over well at the box office. He had some of his biggest hits in talkies, including this one. But watching "Speak Easily" makes you wonder why. It doesn't move like classic Buster. It doesn't make you laugh like classic Buster. It just gives you Buster, playing a fish out of water - too convincingly.
As Professor Post, Buster is urged to leave his lonely sinecure teaching the classics at a fancy college and "go out and find life." Led to believe he has just inherited $750,000, he does so, and meets a troupe of traveling showpeople. Falling in love with one, Pansy Peets (Ruth Selwyn), he decides to take them to Broadway on his dime. Only he doesn't really have as many dimes as he thinks.
There are actually three comedy legends in this film. In addition to Durante, who is the troupe's combination comic and piano player and pretty good here with his miles-of-malaprops-a-minute manner, you have Thelma Todd. People who talk about Buster's tragically curtailed career should take stock of Todd, who died at 29 just as she was poised to take off in an era of funny women. She shows a lot of her realized potential here, as a gold-plated vamp who latches onto Buster when she learns he is putting on the show.
"Have you ever thought seriously of marriage?" she asks Professor Post.
"Yes, that's why I'm single," he replies.
There is also a sequence where Todd's character attempts to blackmail Post by having him caught out in his bedroom, something that could really happen back in the 1930s. This is set up by a beautiful two-hand drunk scene (just watch Todd's reaction after gulping Buster's cocktail!) before moving on to a variation of a routine Buster did many times, trying to carry an unconscious woman to bed, before Durante shows up to give the sequence a terrific capper. The scene is so good it belongs in a much better movie.
Durante isn't overbearingly antic here, but he has little to do except tell lousy jokes and string along the willing professor (whom he calls "that guy with the face") about his dog-and-pony show's prospects. Selwyn's a weak female lead, even with a fourth Hollywood legend, gossip-page pioneer Hedda Hopper, playing her overprotective mother.
Buster is at the center of what's wrong. He's not convincing as a professor, and his comedy mannerisms tend to be slow and obvious. It's been said he struggled in the sound era when MGM tried to make him play sad and sympathetic. There's some of that here (in the beginning Post is warned his lonely condition may drive him to suicide) but also a tentative quality to his line readings, long pauses and repetitious head bobs that may be his famous drinking problem showing up on screen or else just difficulty managing the different demands of talkie comedy.
The film limps along, an occasional funny line or good physical comedy bit standing out all the more for the tedium around it, until reaching an awful finale where the show makes its Broadway debut with assorted mayhem both on- and offstage. Every tired gimmick is trotted out, while Buster overplays Post's idiocy for the sake of some lame slapstick. It's a real wince-producing conclusion that leaves a more sour aftertaste than "Speak Easily" deserves.
People who want to see the worst of Buster will be disappointed with "Speak Easily," though not nearly as much as those who come to it wanting to see more of why he was so great.