"In the Park" is a 14-minute short film from 1915, so this one is already over 100 years old and of course, this makes it a black-and-white silent film. The director here is Charles Chaplin and he is also one of the cast members. But this film focuses on several other characters too and there are many scenes where you see 3 people on the screen, so it's far from a mere Chaplin showcase. But maybe it is just too much for this duration: too many actors, too many plot twists etc. The fact that it is really just one location, namely the one in the title, cannot make up for that. Overall, I also felt that the slapstick comedy here wasn't really great and that there was a great deal of scenes that added almost nothing overall, which is why I think the film even dragged a bit at times. And the problem of lack of enough intertitles, so we know what is going on and actually at least partially understand what they were saying, even if we only get to read 1 out of 10 sentences we see them speaking. I may not be the biggest fan of the silent film greats, but I have seen much better stuff from that era for sure. You really need to dig Chaplin almost to a fanboy/-girl level to see any real value in this quarter of an hour. It's a shamed it turned out so forgettable as the cast includes many prolific and successful actors next to Chaplin. But I give the overall outcome a thumbs-down here. Not recommended.
Review of In the Park
