It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. Everybody has to have at least one misfire in their careers, even the best directors and actors have not so good films or films they regret. From his early still evolving period before he properly found his stride and fairly fresh from his vaudeville background, like 'His Favourite Pastime', 'A Busy Day' shows that Chaplin is not immune from this. While an important milestone period for him, his Keystone years/films generally were watchable and interesting enough overall but patchy, none being among his best work.'A Busy Day' has a few good points. While a little primitive and not exactly audacious, the production values are far from cheap.There are also a few amusing moments, a little zest on occasions and it was interesting to see Chaplin in drag.Where 'A Busy Day' falls down is that mostly it's not particularly funny. The timing feels limp and there is very little, if any, freshness or originality. There is an over-reliance on slap-stick and it is very broad and very repetitive. There is not much charm here and there is not much to be emotionally invested by. The story is flimsy, so much so things feel over-stretched, there are not many Chaplin short films where a short length feels very dull but 'A Busy Day' is one of them.Found myself uncharacteristically disappointed by Chaplin, which was not expected because generally even in lesser efforts he was one of the better things about them. Here he does not look interested and goes through the motions, there is none of the comedy/directing genius that he is deservedly hailed for. The rest of the cast are not much to write home about.In conclusion, an early career misfire. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Although Chaplin edited this film and it does move at a nice pace, it is certainly one of his lesser efforts. He is also credited with directing it, but that seems unlikely given the aforementioned reasons by one of the other reviewers. Chaplin dresses in drag and plays the wife of a parade spectator and ends up kicking and fighting several spectators, including a policeman of course. This is one of the many incidences in early silent films where experimental films were done on location unbeknown-est to the real spectators of this parade. Chaplin was fairly well known already and it's possible he dressed in drag in this film to go unnoticed by the public during shooting. As it is, he appears to be just some obnoxious woman who may be trying to interfere with the parade; this film echoes the Auto Race In Venice film in that respect. Chaplin edits between what appears to be two different locations in the film as well. Other than that, this film has little to recommend itself. * of 4 stars.

In 1914, Charlie Chaplin began making pictures. These were made for Mack Sennett (also known as "Keystone Studios") and were literally churned out in very rapid succession. The short comedies had very little structure and were completely ad libbed. As a result, the films, though popular in their day, were just awful by today's standards. Many of them bear a strong similarity to home movies featuring obnoxious relatives mugging for the camera. Many others show the characters wander in front of the camera and do pretty much nothing. And, regardless of the outcome, Keystone sent them straight to theaters. My assumption is that all movies at this time must have been pretty bad, as the Keystone films with Chaplin were very successful.The Charlie Chaplin we know and love today only began to evolve later in Chaplin's career with Keystone. By 1915, he signed a new lucrative contract with Essenay Studios and the films improved dramatically with Chaplin as director. However, at times these films were still very rough and not especially memorable. No, Chaplin as the cute Little Tramp was still evolving. In 1916, when he switched to Mutual Studios, his films once again improved and he became the more recognizable nice guy--in many of the previous films he was just a jerk (either getting drunk a lot, beating up women, provoking fights with innocent people, etc.). The final evolution of his Little Tramp to classic status occurred in the 1920s as a result of his full-length films.In this film, Charlie is dressed (awfully convincingly) as a woman. And, unfortunately that's really about all there is to the movie. No real plot other than Charlie in drag slugging people. The movie gets a 3 just because of its historical value and because it's cool to see how pretty a girl he made! These reasons alone are NOT enough reason for you to see this film.

'A Busy Day' is proof of something I've often maintained: namely, that no so-called 'lost' film should ever be considered truly lost unless it was deliberately destroyed. 'A Busy Day' was unavailable for many decades, and was generally assumed to be lost ... until an acetate-stock dupe print (intended for home-movie exhibition) was discovered in 1970; the movie is now widely available on video.'A Busy Day' was made by Mack Sennett's Keystone studio, and even by that studio's slapdash methods this was a cursory effort. It ran only about 5 minutes. Cinema projectionists' reels run about 10 minutes; to make up the difference, Sennett purchased an educational film from an outside source ... releasing the two unrelated subjects as a single 'split-reel'.'A Busy Day' is also a good example of Keystone's guerrilla filmmaking techniques. Sennett and his crews would often take advantage of some local event, placing their actors (in costume) in front of this so as to co-opt the event as background for the actors' slapstick antics. When a military band performed its manoeuvres near Venice, California, the Keystone gang ad-libbed this movie at the edge of the parade grounds ... using the musicians as a backdrop.This movie features Keystone's mushroom-faced comedian Mack Swain ... but without the bushy moustache he usually wore in his 'Ambrose' characterisation. Swain is teamed here with Charlie Chaplin, in the role of (wait for it) Swain's wife!Cross-gender casting was fairly common in silent films ... usually employed when a female character had to endure some rough stuff, so a male 'actress' was cast. In two other films ('The Masquerader' and 'A Woman'), Chaplin - a small, graceful actor with delicate features - played a man who dons female disguise: in both cases, he looked quite passable as a *beautiful* woman. (On at least one occasion offscreen, Chaplin wore female disguise in public, without being detected, so as to escape from some overly zealous fans.) In 'A Busy Day', for the only time in his screen career, Chaplin played a biological woman ... so, it's intriguing that 'she' has no sex appeal at all. This woman is a pantomime dame, like Widow Twanky or Monty Python's pepperpot women. She shrieks, she leaps into the air, she blows her nose on her long skirt and beats her husband with an umbrella.Because Chaplin stars in 'A Busy Day', it is often assumed that he also directed this film. That is almost certainly incorrect. Chaplin's personal archives in Vevey did not include a print of this film, indicating that he did not care to own a copy ... and that he had probably participated in 'A Busy Day' only as an actor for hire, rather than as scenarist or director. Surviving records from Sennett's studio indicate that this film was probably directed by George Nichols, a general factotum at Keystone whose best talents were managerial.There is some clever editing work in this movie, of a type that I call 'modular' filmmaking. Two different camera set-ups are used for a sequence in which Chaplin's female character is tossed back and forth by two men. The two set-ups function as two separate modules, or even two separate movies running simultaneously, with Chaplin tossed back and forth between them. The effect is amusing, but I suspect that it was born of necessity ... to make two separate locations look as if they were geographically adjacent.I'll rate 'A Busy Day' 4 points out of 10. It's not especially funny, but it has some historical value as an early example of on-the-fly filmmaking.