Canned Harmony (1912)
** (out of 4)
Fair comedy from Alice Guy-Blache about a woman (Blanche Cornwall) who wants to marry the man (Billy Quirk) she loves but her musician father (Lee Beggs) refuses to let her because he expects her to be with a fellow musician. With no bit of musical talent, the man decides to play a few tricks to try and get the father's respect. CANNED HARMONY is like many comedies from this era in that you've got a mean father and a guy who has to impress him by doing a wide range of things. There's some cross dressing going on here and of course there's a lot of "tricks" done but in the end none of it is all that funny. I've seen hundreds of films from this era and I've always believed that comedy was the hardest one to do and especially hard since many of them just don't hold up well together. The biggest problem here is that what jokes there are just really aren't that funny and in between the jokes are just a bunch of dry and boring scenes that never add up to much. I think Guy-Blache does a good job telling the story but there's just little you can do when the laughs aren't working. I will say that Cornwall was quite charming as the daughter.