A good movie

This last few years, I have been finally catching up with Buster Keaton’s work and this movie was apparently his 13th directorial effort that I have seen. To be honest, I think it will probably be the last one for a while. In fact, instead of one film, you actually get 3 movies but the gimmick was not bad though. The main issue was that they kept repeating the same jokes and setups in 3 different time periods. Still, the prehistoric period was pure gold though and it was probably the oldest movie I have seen dealing with this time period. Only for this, it is actually worth checking the damned thing. Sure, it wasn’t accurate at all but it was obviously not the point here and the end-result felt like a live-action version of the Flintstones but 100 times more satisfying than the dreadful version they delivered in the 90’s (the sequel was actually even worse). There was even some awesome stop-motion animation to show a living dinosaur. To be honest, I think they could have made the whole movie only about this segment. Still, the Roman period was not bad though (the way these black slaves stopped their work to play some craps was however really discriminating and pretty awful to behold). Concerning the modern period, even though it did make sense to add it to the mix, it did feel rather useless since it was basically your basic Buster Keaton’s romantic slapstick comedy. Another mistake they made was to constantly switch between the 3 different time periods and I think they should have completely played each segment the one after the other. Anyway, to conclude, even thought it was probably one of Buster Keaton’s best efforts, it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

7/10