This is the most entertaining Buster Keaton short I have seen, and I've seen most. A phenomenal amount of acrobatic gags plus a good dose of slapstick makes for an unbeatable combination. Essentially, it's a comedic treatment of the classic Romeo and Juliet story.......At the start, Keaton and his girlfriend, Virginia(Fox) are passing love notes back and forth through a knot hole in the fence that separates their back yards. Their parents emerge and scold them for doing so. Then, the parents exchange hate notes through the knot hole.......When Virginia calls from the third floor of her tenement, Keaton opens the gate in the fence, and climbs up the wall to her. Unfortunately, her massive father(played by Joe Roberts) finds them hugging and scares Keaton into running along the clothes lines between the tenements. When he returns, Roberts turns him upside down and pins his feet to a mobile clothes line, using giant clothes pins. Keaton's father(played by his father Joe Keaton), is out beating the dirt out of a rug. Roberts pulls the clothesline so that the rug is now on his side of the fence, while Keaton is where the rug used to be., His inattentive father wallops him with the rug beater, sending him bouncing around. Then, his father removes his clothespins, causing him to fall into a water barrel. Somehow, his head goes through the bottom of the barrel, and into the ground. His father spends a minute or two trying to pull or wedge his head out, finally succeeding. .......Keaton hits Roberts, on the other side of the fence, with a broom, and a cop emerges through the gate , to scold him. Keaton then constructs a thin board, with a pivot point on the fence, near the gate. He calls this a fly catcher! For the next minute or two, the actors are kept busy getting hit on the head, flipped to the other yard, etc., with this seesaw affair........ The families go to court to try to settle their differences. The 2 fathers surround the wacky-looking old judge(Jack Duffy) and badger him, while Keaton hops up on the podium to get his words in. Keaton says he wants to marry Virginia, and get her away from her abusive father. It's agreed that they will wed, and a 'peace treaty' is signed......Preparing for the wedding, Keaton has trouble with his suspenders, which fall apart. He attaches his pants to his vest with a clothes pin, later replaced by a lock. But, his pants still keep falling down. When it comes time to put the ring on her finger, Roberts examines it and concludes it's a cheap Woolesworth ring. He squashes it, and pulls Virginia away, back home.
A little later, Keaton is the top man in a 3 man mobile totem pole that walks through the fence, Keaton grabbing Virginia's suitcase on the 3rd floor and carrying it back to his 3rd floor. They repeat this procedure, only carrying Virginia this time. They continue to the street, where the totem pole is disbanded. For some reason?, Keaton places Virginia in a coal shute , followed by himself, as they land next to an old codger(who looks remarkably like the judge),who is stoking a furnace with the coal. End of story!: a strange ending!......See at YouTube
Review of Neighbors
