A Film Canon

Although this is not one of Keaton's stronger films, it foregrounds physical comedy in a manner that (for the most part) plays to his strengths. As a shy, introverted college student, Keaton has to prove himself to his girl by engaging in a variety of sporting pursuits, most of which bring out one or two strains of his comic personality. As a rowing coxswain, his tendency to construe himself as a still point around which the world moves has disastrous consequences for his team-mates, while his attempt to perform various athletic activities explicates their violent potential, involving him in several near-misses that nicely evoke the chaotic flux against which his comedy tends to occur. However, the most impressive sequence is the extended chase that concludes the narrative, in which Keaton brings all his sports training to bear upon rescuing his beloved from an unwelcome suitor. Reinterpreting domestic objects as javelins and shot putts, pole-vaulting into a locked bedroom, dodging students on the university lawn as if they were football players, he conflates sporting and academic topographies in a delightful manner, although this is somewhat mitigated by the morbid conclusion, which is entirely out of character for a film that is so consistently light-hearted, and would be far more appropriate in Seven Chances.