Fatty's Magic Pants (1914) User Reviews

A MAGICAL FILM

[HAL-57 · 6/10 · 7 May 1999]

Have you ever gone to a fancy dress ball and had your trousers suddenly vanish? Fatty Arbuckle has. What will happen as the evening progresses? Will more articles of his clothing disappear?

This is a good story and is well-acted, particularly by Arbuckle and Minta Durfee, his real-life wife. Laughs never cease as gag after gag ensues. This is another magical film from the folks at Keystone.

Fatty's Magic Pants is another amusing Arbuckle comedy short

[tavm · 5/10 · 27 July 2007]

This short basically has Fatty wanting to go to a formal party with his girlfriend (Minta Durfee, Arbuckle's wife in real life at the time), but doesn't have the tuxedo required for wearing. After his mother refuses permission, he steals one from Charley Chase (yes, that one without his trademark mustache) off the clothesline hanger that resides between their houses. Charley finds out and follows them and later takes a loose string from the pants that, unbeknownst to Fatty, causes them to unravel leaving him with his long white underwear pants showing. Things get more humiliating from there...Primitive slapstick humor dominates concerning Fatty's underwear showing and his attempts to hide it such as behind a table that has to be moved constantly. Pretty amusing if not hilarious, Fatty's Magic Pants (a.k.a. Fatty's Suitless Day) is worth a look for silent comedy movie buffs.

Roscoe Arbuckle's version of pathos.

[mkilmer · 15 June 2006]

I saw this Arbuckle short on DVD as the WH Productions reissue, "Fatty's Suitless Days." Fatty is competing with a young Charley Chase, sans moustache, for the affections of Minta Durfee, who in real life would become Mrs. Roscoe Arbuckle. Fatty wants to take her to a dance, but he doesn't own a suit. After some bickering with his mom at her washboard, he steals Charley's dress suit and takes Minta to the dance. Charley arrives at the dance, opens fire on Fatty with his pistol in a scene of gun violence which shocked my modern sensibilities. (Not really, but it's interesting to consider such scenes in the modern context.) To me, most of the talk of Chaplin and the art of pathos is pretentious and overbearing, not that there's anything wrong with that. Either way, this Fatty Arbuckle short has pathos. He loses his suit, and is led off by a police officer wearing nothing but a barrel. (It was a Keystone short, but the cop was not a "Keystone Kop.") I suppose I have to add that the ending is a double-dose of pathos given the way Roscoe's fortunes ended in real life.

If you are a real fan of silent comedy, you will like this one. It is mindless Arbuckle fun. I still get chills when I watch these glimpses of history, this one filmed over nine decades ago. This one shows its age, but that's part of its charm.

Very good, though the bonking and shooting at the end take the overall score down a few points

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 28 August 2009]

Up until near the end, this was a terrific comedy short starring Fatty Arbuckle. However, at that point, clichés of the day tended to diminish from the watchability of the the film.

The film begins with Fatty and his rival both wanting to take the same girl to the dance. The problem is that it's formal and Fatty doesn't have a tux. So, he does what anyone would do in this situation--he steals the clothes from the rival! How the obese Fatty is able to fit in the clothes is a mystery, but it is pretty funny seeing him squeezed into a suit 4 sizes too small.

Later, at the dance, the rival sneaks in and while Fatty and his date are talking, the guy unstitches Fatty's stolen pants. So, when he gets up, the pants fall off and he scrambles too no avail to hide his plight.

All this is very funny--especially for 1914. However, the film unfortunately chooses to end with some really dumb but common clichés of the day. First, the angry boyfriend pulls out a gun and begins firing wildly--hitting Fatty in the butt. Then, when a cop sees Fatty running about in his underwear, he starts bonking him in the head with his night-stick again and again and again! Both clichés are really dumb and if you've seen a zillion old comedy shorts, you'll notice that this is a very common occurrence and a cheap and easy (i.e., brainless) way to end a film. So, back in 1914, when in doubt, bonk and shoot!

By the way, is it just me or does the title of this film sound like a pornographic movie?

A Simple Idea That's Good For A Few Laughs

[Snow Leopard · 21 June 2001]

In this comedy short, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle gets a fair number of laughs from a simple idea. He has to get himself ready for a formal occasion in the evening, and he finds himself encountering a series of unexpected difficulties in getting himself dressed. There aren't really any big laughs, but the movie is usually moderately amusing, and Arbuckle's timing is pretty good. The version of "Fatty's Suitless Day" (also called "Fatty's Magic Pants") that aired recently also had a catchy musical score that matched the action nicely.

While this isn't one of the best comedies of the era, it's worth a look.

Parents

[tedg · 28 July 2006]

If you want to understand your wife, you need to understand her parents. If you want to understand movies, you need to rummage around in these old things. Mack Sennett is key.

This little project is unimportant, except in context.

Guns as funny. Pantless men at parties as funny. Dispirited fat men as funny. Pretty girls as worth any risk – well, that's a timeless universal.

But here was the funniest man in movies before Chaplin, with his wife, doing his funniest bits. There's little more important in the root of the food chain.

So in a way, you won't have any fun with this until you see almost anything afterward that has physical comedy. Then the mirrors in your visual memory will reflect back to this stuff that you've hung in there; and you'll find yourself chuckling deeper.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Two Roscoe

[Michael_Elliott · 11 March 2008]

Fatty's Suitless Day (1915)

** (out of 4)

Fatty needs a new suit to go dancing but this just leads to trouble. Again, not too many laughs but there are a few cute moments to keep the thing going. Charley Chase plays the rival but both men have better shorts out there.

Fatty's Spooning Day (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A flirt (Fatty Arbuckle) gets thrown behind bars and must explain to his wife. A few laughs including Fatty getting beaten up by his wife but other than that the film is pretty flat.

Implausible

[jtyroler · 21 November 2011]

For this Keystone slapstick to be believed, you must be able to imagine that Roscoe Arbuckle could put on a pair of Charley Chase's pants and a tuxedo jacket and the only problem is that the legs would be too short for the pants and the jacket sleeves would be too short and that he couldn't close the jacket. In reality, Arbuckle couldn't get either garment on.

If you can overlook this obvious problem, this is a pretty funny short and is one time that Arbuckle doesn't come out on top in the end. Roscoe and Charley Chase are both competing for the affections of Minta Durfee to attend a dance that evening that requires dress clothes. Charley has either rented or bought a tux earlier, Roscoe hadn't. Charley stops by on his way home (conveniently located next door to Roscoe's house) to show off his tux. Roscoe tries to get his mother to let him have 50 cents to rent a tux and she refuses. It's kind of implied that Roscoe is lazy and doesn't do any work by his mother pointing to his arms and pointing out how strong he is. He stretches out his arms and makes some motions like, yes, he is strong, but, instead, starts yawning.

Roscoe then tries to steal Charley's tux by knocking him out while he's standing next to Minta. She knocks him over, Charley and Roscoe start fighting and Charley appears to have the upper hand until a cop shows up. During all this, the tux apparently needs to be aired out, so Charley hangs the tux and top hat on his clothes line, which is also attached to Roscoe's house, and this allows Roscoe to steal the tux.

Charley doesn't find out that his tux has been stolen until it is time to go to the dance where he sees Roscoe wearing his tux with the incredible shrinking waistband and unusually broad shoulders in the back of the jacket. Charley sneaks in through a window, and comically removes the tuxedo from Roscoe, although, at first, only the pants. Roscoe is embarrassed as he helps Al St. John, in an extremely subdued performance for him, move a table from one room into the room where everyone is dancing. This is when everyone sees Roscoe without pants and a fight breaks out.

In the end, Roscoe, basically in his underwear, is out on the street getting arrested and hauled off to jail wearing a barrel as Charley and Minta laugh out of a window.