Battling Butler (1926) - film review

Alfred Butler is an effeminate aristocrat who, at his father’s  prompting, goes off on a hunting trip in the mountains, in the hope that this will make a man of him.  Leaving behind his comfortable home, accompanied only by his faithful valet and several lorryloads of creature comforts, Alfred embarks on his great adventure with enthusiasm.  Alas, Alfred is not the most adept of hunters.  Birds, rabbits, fish – they all seem to be able to out-smart him.  But then he makes a real catch – in an attractive mountain girl whom he instantly resolves to marry.  Unfortunately, the girl’s father and brother are real men who have no intention of admitting such a weakling into their family.  Alfred’s valet wins them around by spinning a lie that Alfred is in fact Battling Butler, a boxer who is about to take on the lightweight champion.  The ruse works at first but later backfires when the real Battling Butler wins the championship and is challenged by another boxer, the Alabama Murderer.  To keep up the deception, Alfred must go off to a training camp, ostensibly to prepare for the coming match.  Here, he gets on the wrong side of Battling Butler and ends up having to take his place in the fight against the Alabama Murderer...

The most commercially successful of Buster Keaton’s films was also the legendary comedian’s personal favourite, and yet it is an atypical comedy for this comedy giant.  Based on a popular operetta, Battling Butler offers the familiar story of Buster trying to improve himself.  But this time, instead of a poor man hoping to ascend the social ladder, Keaton is a wealthy aristocrat who wants to awaken the primitive beast within him. 

Battling Butler may not have the enduring appeal or grandeur of Keaton’s subsequent masterpiece The General (1927), but it is still a satisfying romp that packs one or two palpable punches, even if it doesn’t quite land that killer blow.  As the hapless Alfred almost garrottes himself in trying to enter the boxing ring, it is evident from the outset that he is unlikely to survive one round, even if his opponent is an incapacitated jellyfish.   The jokes that ensue are predictable but irresistibly funny.

Buster’s misadventures in the boxing ring may have been inspired by the Keystone Kops comedy The Knockout (1914), which starred Fatty Arbuckle, the early screen comic who gave Keaton his first break, back in 1917.   The same premise was later reused, both by Charlie Chaplin in City Lights (1931) and Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way (1936) – an illustration perhaps that recycling is far from being a modern phenomenon. 

The film is problematic in that Keaton is so convincing as a spindly invertebrate that it is hard to accept the resolution to the story.  Our hero’s sudden transformation from a shrinking violet into a boxing wunderkind seems about as plausible as Belgium winning every single gold metal at the Olympics, not that it matters greatly.  As implausible as the plot is, the comedy wins through and keeps us laughing.  Alfred’s failure to shoot a duck at point-blank range stands as one the funniest gags of any Buster Keaton film.

© Brian Evans 2010

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