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Good start, but then it gets ruined

Don't Believe the Hype

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Like many of Charlie Chaplin's early movies, "One A.M." emphasizes the physical humor. The man known as the Tramp plays a drunk who arrives home in the wee hours only to experience all manner of trouble getting inside and then getting in bed. This movie has a slightly more complex plot than Chaplin's very early movies, but he was still a few years away from using his movies to focus on social issues. In the meantime, you're sure to enjoy his gags as he attempts to climb the stairs and then open his Murphy bed.PS: Cinematographer Roland Totheroh got played by David Duchovny in Richard Attenborough's "Chaplin".

Chaplin playing drunk characters are his weakest roles, and for much of the time I was watching One A.M. I got the feeling that he went in to work and didn't have any ideas, so just decided to play a drunk guy coming home from a big night on the town. The plot is virtually nonexistent, it really does start with him coming home drunk, and his only purpose from beginning to end is to get upstairs and go to bed. He stumbles out of a taxi and, after accidentally paying the driver with a cigarette butt instead of the fifty cent fare, he climbs through a window to get into his house, stepping in the fishbowl on the way in. There is a series of mildly amusing sight gags involving things like an extremely slippery throw rug, a spinning table (which was one of the more amusing gags, despite making no sense at all), a stuffed cougar (or some other scary animal of the cat family), a coat rack, and a staircase with some insufficiently attached carpeting. The set that the movie is filmed on is a little strange, with two staircases on either side, both leading up to the second floor, which apparently contains just one door to the bedroom and a clock with a wildly over-sized pendulum. I'm struck by how unrealistic the set is, with those two staircases (it seems like something Sarah Winchester would build in her house), but then again, that clock's pendulum swings long and fast, directly across the path of the door to the bedroom, so it's clear that the set was designed with physical comedy in mind, not architectural efficiency. Chaplin does, after all, ultimately decide to climb that coat rack, twice, rather than use either of the staircases.The best part of the movie, however, is definitely the bed, which Charlie has to deal with when he eventually does make it upstairs. The mechanics of the bed make no sense at all, as it flips around every which way and seems to have a personality of it's own. And apparently it doesn't like being slept on! There is an interesting contraption at the end that I found a little curious. There's a thing that looks like a ladder in the bathroom, but it turns out that it's a shower that sprays water out of all of the rungs. I wonder if this was kind of a new and innovative showering idea that just never really caught on. At any rate, after losing his battle with the bed, Charlie ultimately falls asleep in the bathtub and the movie ends. It's a clever little comedy, but it's basically just physical comedy and nothing else. Even back in 1916 Chaplin was making much better films than this.

Monday September 17, 7:00 pm, The Paramount Theater Throughout his youth performing in British Music Halls, Charles Chaplin specialized in playing the inebriate stumblebum with hilarious results. The fourth of twelve two-reel shorts produced under contract to the Mutual Film Corporation, One A.M. (1916) is the only scenario in which Chaplin, as a bewildered boozer, occupies the screen entirely alone throughout most of the film. Albert Austin appears briefly as a taxi driver in the opening seconds.An intoxicated gentleman (Chaplin) arrives at his doorstep by taxi and engages in an exhibition of alcoholic gymnastics with his house and its contents. Unable to unlock the front door, he climbs through a window, slides across the floor on small rugs and scales a large hat rack to the second floor when negotiating the stairs proves too difficult. Charlie finds himself running atop a spinning table, then battling an uncooperative Murphy bed, only to end up sleeping in the bathtub.

Chaplin plays a drunk who spends the entire film trying to get into his house and go to bed. In a comedic experiment, Chaplin appears alone in this film, aside from Albert Austin, who briefly appears at the beginning as a cab driver. Chaplin draws the humor from his interaction with various objects around the house, most humorously with a hostile Murphy bed. Is this comic experiment successful? Yes, for the most part. It is a funny short, but, in my opinion, nowhere near his funniest. Still, one must admire Chaplin's boldness. When one watches this film, one sees a talented film maker testing the limits of skills. Bravo.