The Timid Young Man (1935)

This is kind of a weird one.  While it has its good comedic moments, it doesn’t have much in the way standout comic sequences.  What’s more, though, some of the plot is just uncomfortable.  Not really sure how this short was dreamed up, but it’s no favorite of mine.

Fleeing from a wedding that he evidently agreed to while drunk, Buster heads for the hills.  On the way, he picks up a hitchhiker/runaway bride.  Both have sworn off romantic entanglements and cheerfully declare themselves a “woman-hater” and “man-hater” respectively (note:  this just seems to be their way of saying they’re done with women/men.  There’s nothing to indicate that either actually hates members of the opposite gender in any malicious way; just unfortunate phrasing.)  They plan to camp in the mountains together but are soon set upon by an unpleasant boor of a fellow traveler who pushes Buster around and acts like the girl is his property.  Buster and the girl need to do some quick thinking to get away from him.

It’s this guy, the interloper, that really brings the short down for me.  I get that understanding of harassment has grown hugely since 1935, and a domineering guy who “won’t take no for an answer” constitutes the main external conflict in plenty of old comedies (a fair number of Buster’s silent stuff features the bad guy pulling the girl into his arms and laughing as she tries to get away.)  This plot really doesn’t sit right with me, though.  Maybe it’s by virtue of the fact that it is a talkie and doesn’t tell its story through oversized gestures, a practice which can distance you a little from what’s happening onscreen.

But for whatever reason, this guy skeeves me out way more than a lot of these types of plots do.  He repeatedly calls the girl “baby,” wants her at his beck and call, and is a generally lascivious creep.  He’s also taken Buster’s car keys, stranding them with him, and insists that, when they do part ways, the girl is going with him, not Buster.  It just makes me really uncomfortable, and it’s compounded by the fact that Buster’s character is a little more easily cowed here.  It’s not quite the “chump dynamic” from the MGM years, but he doesn’t push back nearly as much as I like to see with Buster.

All that understandably puts a damper on the humor, and unfortunately, there isn’t a lot start with.  Most of what we do get is contained to small moments, bits of incidental comedy from Buster.  There’s a good gag of him leaning on a folding chair (you can imagine how well that turns out) and a funny shot of him attacking a watermelon.  There’s only one good comic sequence, involving a fishing hole, a small dog, and some Mexican jumping beans; creative and cute.  Fishing isn’t quite as reliable as baseball, cars, and trains, but it’s still one of those topics that pretty much always lends itself to good Buster comedy. 

Warnings

Slapstick violence and some unpleasant harassment.