The Candy Kid (1917) User Reviews

Faux Charlie.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 5 February 2019]

In the 1910s, Charlie Chaplin became so famous that there were a lot of immitators. Actors like Billy West would dress up as the Tramp character and I am pretty sure Chaplin hated this....but what was he to do? Among the most famous of these faux Chaplins was Billy West and he stars with Oliver Hardy in "The Candy Kid".

The first portion of the film is better than the second. In the first, a bunch of guys are waiting in an office for some sort of job interview. In the second portion, Billy is offered a job as an anarchist and they give him bombs to toss about at folks. His response really makes little sense...nor is the premise fully realized. In fact, often instead of humor, the film relies on West making faces and not much more. Disappointing.

Capitalism at Work

[boblipton · 6/10 · 15 August 2018]

When Ethel Cassity quits his candy parlor to go work at Oliver Hardy's competing establishment, Leo White hires Billy West to blow up up his rival's shop.

Billy West was the most successful of the Chaplin imitators, and here he is, doing Chaplin from Keystone. While he had the mannerisms and gags down to a T, West always wound up doing Chaplin from a few years earlier, while Chaplin kept on refining and expanding his character. In his efforts, West liked hire Chaplin's old collaborators like White and other comics, like the young Hardy to play the big nasty foil whom Eric Campbell was to Charley.

Such was the overwhelming success of Chaplin and the demand for more Chaplin pictures than the real one could provide, that there were half a dozen imitators. Billy had some real talent, but it wasn't until the early 1920s that he struck out on his own and developed his own comic persona. Still, movies like this one were funny and popular.