the audience applauded

I'll tell you why so serious

Fantastic!

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

"Tango Tangle" is a 12-minute short film from the year 1914, the year when World War I began. So if you put this into perspective, you will not be surprised that this is a black-and-white silent film. It is over 100 years old and stars Charlie Chaplin, which means it is almost exclusively comedy. Some drama occasionally, some fight sequences and also some romance of course. But all this really only serves the purpose of getting even more comedy in here. There are more stars working on this one other than Chaplin. The director and writer is Mack Sennett, very successful back in the day and co-starring in here is Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, one of the biggest silent film stars and filmmakers in his own right. Sterling and Conklin are also somewhat famous to people with huge interest in silent films. Charlie here arrives at a dance and mayhem quickly ensues as he keeps fighting the musicians over the love of a young woman that everybody seems to have an interest in. Despite the strong cast and crew, this was only a mediocre movie, nowhere near Chaplin's best. I do not recommend the watch.

In this short, another one of the early ones Charlie Chaplin made for Mack Sennett, he's clean shaven and is nothing like his Little Tramp character. Well, except here he's just as drunk as you'd expect him to be in these early efforts. His beginning scenes are quite amusing as he seems to be at a real dance hall happening as he tries to woo some ladies and keeps slipping and tripping himself. But all that happens afterwards results in some nonsense about fighting over a pretty girl that happen to be also pursued by musicians Ford Sterling and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. As a result, I didn't think the rest was all that funny and in fact was repetitious though it was nice to see Arbuckle do some falls himself. So on that note, Tango Tangles is worth a look and nothing else.

The main surprise in this film is seeing Chaplin 'out of costume' -- without comedy makeup and without moustache, he appears here as a handsome young wavy-haired man-about-town. (It's always disorienting how good-looking Charles Chaplin was compared to the Tramp!) Keystone comedies aren't my style, but this one's innocuous enough, with entertaining elements in amongst the standard punch-up scenes; and to be fair, the fights here do have some memorable moments, courtesy of Charlie. Watch him roll up his sleeves and admire his own prowess after delivering a successful opening blow, or waggle his buttocks in tango time as the combatants circle... His introductory scene as a tipsy guest confused at the hat-check counter stands out as elegant comedy amongst the frenzy, as does a later moment when he attempts to lean back against the counter, discovers he has misjudged the distance, recovers, and moves the table forward a pace for his convenience rather than stepping back a pace: just an improvisational moment, but one that points to a different style of film.Ford Sterling and Fatty Arbuckle have some good musical 'business' together towards the start of the film, although this degenerates rather in later scenes; I wasn't as impressed by Sterling's over-the-top performance here as other reviewers have been. Amused to note the angular Al St. John in a stripy costume at the back in several scenes...So far as both Keystone and Chaplin are concerned, this film is something a little different. Worth seeing as mild entertainment, even for those who don't normally much like that sort of thing.

This is a film from Chaplin's first year in films. During this VERY hectic year, he churned out film after film after film for Keystone Studios and the quality of the films are, in general, quite poor. That's because the character of "the Little Tramp" was far from perfected and the films really had no script--just the barest of story ideas. While some Chaplin lovers might think this is sacrilege, all these movies I have seen are pretty lousy. Yes, there are some cute slapstick moments but barely any plot--absolutely NOTHING like the Chaplin we all came to love in his full-length films of the 20s and 30s.As stated above, Charlie does not sport his usual mustache. The movie is about jealousy and consists of lots of people pushing and punching each other--that's pretty much it!