Top Five Gags: The Balloonatic

*Spoilers.*

January 22, 1923—the day The Balloonatic was released. It starts slow, but the gags pick up a lot in the second half of the short. Here are my favorites.

 

 

Fishing

Lots of good bits in this sequence. I love when Buster accidentally gets his fishing waders full of water—after first trying to scoop the water out with his hands, he just stands on his head to dump it all out at once. At one point, after too many mishaps, he takes to cautiously dipping his line into the water by hand, and he ultimately resorts to trying to herd the fish into one spot and then damming the river so the bed goes dry, trapping them. I also love the awkward way he waddles around when his feet start slipping out of boots.

 

 

The Dive

After Buster’s makeshift dam (of course) breaks, he’s sent tumbling downstream. He finally manages to right himself in the exact spot where Phyllis Haver is about to dive into the water. Great physical comedy here as she knocks into him and they both stagger up dazedly, trying to figure out what on earth just happened!

 

 

Fish Dinner

Buster’s finally caught a fish, and it’s time to eat. Unfortunately, he decides to light his cooking fire inside his canoe, and in lieu of a pan, he cooks his fish on a tennis racket. This idea is every bit as terrible as you can imagine, and even as the tennis racket immediately goes up in flames, it still doesn’t occur to him that he might want to put out the fire in the canoe.

 

Canoeing

With his fish charred to bits, Buster takes to the river to go hunting, gliding along until he comes upon a rabbit on the shore. As he moves in to take his shot, I love how smoothly it’s revealed that his legs have been sticking through the hole burned in his canoe this whole time, and he’s essentially been canoeing Fred Flintstone-style.

 

 

Tailed by a Bear

Buster has plenty of gags where he unwittingly lopes along with someone/something dangerous right behind him. This one is elevated to art when he drops down to shoot at a squirrel, the bear still right at his heels. The squirrel darts away just in time for a second bear to pop up right in front of him. In a superbly-timed gag, Buster clubs Bear #2 with the butt of his rifle, unknowingly shooting Bear #1 at the exact same moment between his legs. It’s like a circular mechanical gag, but with wild animals! He was one of a kind, I tell you.