What makes it different from others?

Nice effects though.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

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. He did do better than 'Laughing Gas', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Laughing Gas' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.'Laughing Gas' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Laughing Gas' is not bad at all. While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick.Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Laughing Gas' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. Overall, pretty decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

"Laughing Gas" is an American live action short film from 1914, so this one is already over a century old and it also runs for 14 minutes. With this age, nobody can be surprised that here we have a black-and-white silent film. The writer, director and lead actor is the legendary Charlie Chaplin and this is a film from his very first year in the entertainment industry. The title already gives away that many characters are laughing in this little movie and why they do so. Most of the action is linked to a dentist for which Chaplin works and he causes a great deal of mayhem there, not just with gas, but also with people's teeth etc. This is one of the rare Chaplin (short) film that could have needed more intertitles actually as I felt that the story was not too easy to understand at times and it was more than just a little bit awkward to see everybody constantly laughing in this film and you as an audience member have no clue what is actually going on. Admittedly, the comedy at that point from Chaplin is still far away from the level of his career-best works because here we have the approach for example of Chaplin punching a guy and that is the joke. So as a whole, this one can impossibly receive a positive recommendation. I give it a thumbs-down unless you are a gigantic Chaplin fan and suggest you watch something else instead.

This was another early Charlie Chaplin film that he also directed. Since it's for the Mack Sennett Keystone Studio, expect lots of punching, slapping, and throwing of bricks. In Laughing Gas, The Tramp is a dentist's assistant who sometimes acts like he's his boss. One of the ways he takes advantage of that is when he steals kisses from one of the lovely female patients by using one of those tweezers to pull her face toward his. And she seems to like it! That was one of the funniest scenes for me. There's also a funny fight/chase between him and Mack Swain that causes Swain to go guess where! So on that note, Laughing Gas is recommended and is available on a DVD collection called "American Slapstick".

Viewers accustomed to the Charlie Chaplin of City Lights and Modern Times may be startled to see just how rowdy his early Keystone comedies could get. In some cases these movies amount to little more than 10 or so minutes of wild slapstick, and when the prints are in poor condition even rudimentary plot-lines become incoherent. A few of the Keystones display a degree of finesse and are well worth watching (I'd put The New Janitor and The Masquerader on the short list of Charlie's most enjoyable early films), while others are of interest only to Chaplin buffs determined to see all his work, even the scrappy and unpleasant stuff—which brings us to Laughing Gas. Charlie plays a dentist's assistant in this one, more of an office helper than an actual dentist, though he takes an active role in anesthetizing patients. This short presents Charlie at his most violent: hurling bricks, kicking butts, and fighting with practically everybody, especially Mack Swain. I enjoy good slapstick, but I found this short exasperating to watch. Admittedly, the print I saw was in bad shape and thus difficult to follow, especially towards the end, but I suspect that even if a pristine camera negative of Laughing Gas turned up in a vault somewhere it wouldn't make much difference, quality-wise. For audiences of 1914 it was an exciting novelty to see the knockabout action of vaudeville and burlesque transferred to the new medium, but nowadays it's difficult to find genuine humor in something like this, for me anyway.Chaplin was still in his apprenticeship at this point and had only recently started directing his films. He obviously didn't care whether viewers liked his screen character or not, but just wanted to keep the tempo fast and frantic. (Or was he trying to please his boss, Mack Sennett?) It's clear that the action in this film, like most of the Keystones, was loosely improvised from scene to scene, without any larger sense of purpose. On that level, buffs may be interested to compare this early, "unedited" Chaplin with the later perfectionist who demanded multiple takes. Typical gag: Charlie, pretending to be the dentist while his boss is away, flirts with a pretty young patient, then takes a pair of pincers, pinches her nose, and yanks her face over for a kiss. Okay, it's a little on the rough side but a decent gag. But overkill sets in rapidly as Charlie repeats the business three or four more times to diminishing returns. (Maybe it got a big laugh on the set?) Early on, however, there's a nicely performed bit of physical comedy: Charlie follows his employer's wife up some stairs, stumbles, attempts to steady himself by grabbing her, and yanks her dress off. It's startling and cleanly performed without looking over-rehearsed, and is perhaps the funniest bit in the film. Otherwise, it's non-stop fighting. Silent comedy fans with a special interest in Chaplin's work will want to see Laughing Gas, but there's no strong reason to seek it out otherwise unless you crave slapstick in its most chaotic form.Incidentally, the actress playing the dentist's wife (i.e. the one who loses her dress) is Alice Howell, who went on to star in a series of her own. Stan Laurel later cited her as one of the finest comediennes of the silent screen. I haven't seen enough of her films to form an opinion myself, but the nice contribution she makes to Laughing Gas whets my appetite to see more of her work.