Cheap Doughboys (Video) (Buster Keaton, Sally Eilers) (Edward Sedgwick) Price

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Customer Reviews of Doughboys

D'oh!
The wonderful Turner Classic Movies recently broadcast DOUGHBOYS during a Buster Keaton marathon in which they had just aired three of Keaton's 20s silent short films. The difference between this film and those classics was enormous. Conventional wisdom tells us that Buster Keaton's career plummeted (after peaking in the 1920s) when he signed his MGM contract, thus losing the creative control that he had enjoyed previously.

I knew this fact previously, so I went into DOUGHBOYS not expecting much. It was a comedy war film following Keaton's character from army boot training to combat. There have been other movies that have taken these elements and made entertaining and funny scenarios out of them, so I assumed that there existed the potential for quality. I made it a point to take the jokes on their own merits rather than anticipating the heights that I had seen in Keaton's silent films. Unfortunately, I had to wait quite a long time for the jokes. Eventually I realized that what I had been viewing as awkward silences were, in fact, the jokes.

Oh dear, this was painful. Buster Keaton never had a chance to save this one, because he has absolutely nothing to work with. I never felt sorry for a film star the way I felt for Buster Keaton in this stinker. What was MGM thinking? They get one of cinema's most original and creative minds and put him in the most clichéd and unfunny comedies I've seen.

I only laughed twice while watching this film. The first was the sequence where Buster (in drag) manages to infiltrate a stage show and gets involved in an energetic fight/dance routine. It's Buster playing to his slapstick strengths, so naturally the result is graceful and hilarious. The second laugh comes from almost the very end, where Buster finds himself behind enemy lines and discovers unexpected conditions.

Two funny gags do not a good film make. To any fan of Buster Keaton, I would recommend just fast forwarding to the dance sequence and forgetting about the rest. Oh, Buster, why, why, why?

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Doughboys
DOUGHBOYS is OK. This is Buster's second talkie for MGM. Doughboys starts out with Buster playing a "rich guy" character similar to his role Battling Butler and The Navigator. That part is nice. As is the ending. In between, Doughboys is just a typical "military comedy".

Ed Brophy, as a sergeant, SCREAMS all his lines.The musical scene and the singing number with Cliff Edwards are good. The only classic Buster scene is when Buster and the girl try to figure out what to do with a bomb. That couple of minutes is the equal of Buster's great silent work. And the finish is pretty good. At least Buster gets the girl.

Doughboys does not measure up to the standards of "Free and Easy", Buster's first talkie. However, it is much better than Buster's last four MGM talkies.

Only view Doughboys if you've seen all of Buster's silent work and just want to see everything else. MGM should be ashamed of themselves.

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Ukulele Buster
"Doughboys" features Buster as a rich kid who erroneously enlists in the US Army during World War 1. Supposedly, some of the scenes are based on his experiences when he actually served in the war.

This film is set in 1917, according to the newspaper headline at the beginning of the picture that announces that President Wilson is calling for volunteers. However, if you looked away from the TV for 2 seconds and didn't see that headline, you would think it was set in 1930, when the film was made. Obviously, the MGM wardrobe department neglected to dress the cast and extras according to the style of the 1910's. None of the women are wearing corsets, long hair, big hats, lace-up shoes, or hemlines below the knee. None of the men are wearing derbies. All of the fashion you see is 1929-30. Buster is standing alongside his 1930 Rolls Royce in this scene. It is surprising to see such negligence in a Buster Keaton film because he had been a stickler for authenticity when he was in charge of the silent productions he made at his own studio, some with historical settings such as "Our Hospitality" and "The General". However, when he joined MGM in 1928, he was forced to surrender most of his creative control.

Anyway, two of the best scenes in "Doughboys" are musical numbers. One is an uncoordinated acrobatic dance that all the film historians and critics rave about. Buster is in women's clothing (although he's got his Army boots on) in a stage revue to entertain the boys. A better musical scene is a rhythmic ukulele duet with Ukulele "Ike" Edwards. In their barracks before a roll call on the ship to France, the two share a ukulele and sing a jazzy number about nothing (the lyrics go like this: "da dum da doo ba ba dum I want my mama dum bo dee dum bo") that ends with Buster either sucking or biting (I can't tell which) the tuning devices of the ukulele. We are robbed of more of this wonderful scene when Sargeant Brophy storms in and screams to break it up. Sargeant Brophy is played by Ed ("you mugs! ") Brophy, who happens to scream and beat up Buster in most of his MGM films. But this one takes the cake. I have never seen any actor take on so much scream abuse than Buster does in "Doughboys".

Buster's battle scenes are quite clever. He tries to incorporate his silent physical comedy in some of the scenes, but the producers of the film don't give him more than half a soundless minute to get his gags across (a good one which reminds me of Woody Allen is his clumsy attempt to dispose a bomb that's ready to explode). In the early days of sound, movie-makers were obsessed with filling all their scenes with lots of talk.