The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: LGBTQ Inclusion in Doctor Who – The Ugly

Fortunately, there aren’t many queer-related moments in Who that are distasteful to me.  Also, each one is small, sometimes a single misfire in an otherwise delightful character.  However, they all annoy/disappointment/aggravate me, so I’ll give each my two cents of frustration.

At the top of the list are the Thin One and the Fat One from “A Good Man Goes to War.”  Having introduced themselves as such to Lorna, she asks about these gents’ names, and the Fat One replies, “We’re the Thin Fat Gay Married Anglican Marines.  Why would we need names as well?”  First of all, why wouldn’t you?  Presumably, you both got through a significant chunk life prior to being married or a marine, and there may possibly be more to you than a simplistic collection of labels.  It’s an unpleasant instance of othering, and it also reduces the couple to a throwaway joke.  What makes it even worse is that this is the 51^st century, the time of Captain Jack Harkness.  Sexual orientation is a non-issue and same-sex relationships wouldn’t stand out as unusual.  (And even if this wasn’t Who’s extremely sex-positive 51^st century, it’s still 3,000 years in the future – are we to believe that anyone is still going to be saying “gay married” then?)

Similarly, while I’ve said how much I like the Cassinis in “Gridlock,” I really dislike the moment where Brannigan jokingly calls them “sisters” and, when they remind him that they’re married, says, “Ooh, none of that modern talk!  I’m an old-fashioned cat.”  The Cassinis are far better-realized than the Thin One and the Fat One and generally treated as such, but this exchange is even worse than the one in “A Good Man Goes to War.”  Not only is it now 5 billion years in the future (our species doesn’t even have enough “past” for me to come up with a comparable “old-fashioned” example,) but Brannigan is a freakin’ feline alien who’s recently fathered kittens with his human wife.  And two women is too much for his delicate sensitivities?  Give me a break.

Next, there’s Oswin in “Asylum of the Daleks.”  Oswin is fun and I like her, but it’s annoying when, after saying that her first crush was named Rory, she course-corrects with, “Actually, she was called Nina.  I was going through a phase.”  First, the conversation makes no sense and feels like it’s only there to serve the going-through-a-phase “joke.”  Seriously, why is this line happening?  As for the line itself, it’s true that some straight folks experiment, and in a vacuum, it wouldn’t be so bad.  However, the media has a history of downplaying honest female/female attraction, and “going through a phase” has long been used to dismiss queer sexuality.  Plus, Who already had Vastra ogling the Doctor in in her inability to differentiate humanoid genders (glad that became a Strax-only trait) and the Doctor kissing Jenny on the mouth in a moment of relief/happiness.  Throw in “bisexual” Jane on Coupling and the muddle with Irene on Sherlock, and Moffat’s track record with female queerness leaves a lot to be desired.

Lastly, Susan the horse.  I’m sad to bring it up, because Susan the horse delights me, but this is The Ugly after all.  I love that the preacher’s horse is trans, but the Doctor’s continued use of male pronouns rankles.  I guess that saying “she” might have obscured the point, making the preacher simply look ignorant of his horse’s biological sex, but pronouns are so important in the trans community that it’s a poor trade.  And then, the Doctor caps with it, “He wants you to respect his life choices.”  “Life choices,” really?  That feels uncomfortably close to calling orientation/gender identity something that people “choose” – no thanks.  As with the Oswin line, the phrasing is problematically cliché, marring any good intentions the scene might have had.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: LGBTQ Inclusion in Doctor Who – The Bad

I should preface this by saying that most of the examples I’ll be discussing in this post are more “disappointing” than outright “bad.”  Despite its lack of LGBTQ regulars, Who is more queer-friendly than a lot of shows out there.  The instances that really rankle are being saved for the “ugly” post next week, and so, today’s write-up is more about things that could have been better.

I mentioned last week that I like Canton, as well as Vastra and Jenny (though I’ve discussed my conflicting feelings about that pair,) and I do.  However, I think that all three are written a bit insensitively for their time periods, especially where marriage is concerned.  I fully believe that Canton would’ve wanted to be married, and the extreme illegality of it at the time wouldn’t have changed his longing for equality.  That said, “I just wanted to get married” doesn’t make sense as a reason for being kicked out of the FBI.  One, I doubt Canton was actively attempting to marry, two, I doubt he would’ve told anyone at the FBI about his dream, and three, it’s not like they would’ve kept him on if he hadn’t wanted to get married in particular.  He was dismissed for being gay, and to tie it specifically to marriage seems a bit too contemporary for what the gay community was experiencing in the ‘60s (plus, it feels worded that way mainly to facilitate the “gay reveal” at the end of the two-parter.)  Similarly, it’s entirely reasonable that Vastra and Jenny would consider themselves spouses and treat each other as such, but again, the wording seems strange for the period.  I’d appreciate even one line to the effect of, “England’s church and lawmakers may dictate as they please, but Jenny is my wife and they cannot take that,” acknowledging the inequality of the time while celebrating Vastra and Jenny’s defiance of it. 

Both Canton and Vastra/Jenny tie into my next point, so I’ll stick with them.  In the last few seasons, orientation has become a bit more of a Thing on Who, in that it’s more likely to be revealed rather than incorporated.  What I mean is, lately, we’ve been getting less of that casual inclusion that I talked about last week.  Instead, Canton’s dismissal from the FBI is discussed with only this vague marriage explanation, until he finally comes out at the end of his last scene on the show.  It’s set-up like a Moment, a gotcha! line.  In this way, his orientation isn’t a facet of his character – it’s his “twist.”  And while we’ve of course known about Vastra and Jenny’s relationship since their first episode, “The Snowmen” (the first to mention their marriage) seems to relish scenes of them telling the stuffy, pearl-clutching Victorians that they’re married.  They’re not allowed to just be; it almost feels like the marriage is there, not due to their love for each other, but so they can shock people.  To be fair, the show also leans pretty hard on the “lizard woman” card, but my point is, their relationship shouldn’t be for anyone else.  It’s for them, and unfortunately, it doesn’t always feel that way.

This last point is more of a quibble, but it’s still a little bothersome.  It also seems that, more recently, the show has a greater tendency to use LGBTQ references as jokes.  There’s stuff I’ve mentioned, like “Good evening – I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife” (cue fainting Victorian,) but others, too.  I think of the running gag of Val thinking the Doctor and Craig are a couple in “Closing Time.”  The Doctor is as unruffled as ever and Craig is only mildly discomfited when he realizes she’s thinking, and truthfully, I don’t find the gag offensive or anything.  It’s just that it’s part of what feels like a more general trend of viewing queerness as something a bit funny, a bit shocking, or a bit “other.”  And after being used to the show viewing queerness as something normal, that’s disappointing to me.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: LGBTQ Inclusion in Doctor Who – The Good

I may look at Torchwood later, but for now, we’re strictly talking about the mother ship.  When it comes to Who, there’s a lot of inclusion to talk about, which is a good thing in and of itself.  But of course, an important step in representation for a marginalized group is when there’s enough inclusion that simply existing no longer cuts it, and people start talking about quality.  I’m hoping that, as I write the next few Sunday Who Reviews, the good outweighs the other two.

First, we do have the simple fact that there’s a fair amount of representation to discuss.  It’s true that our only major queer characters, Jack, Vastra, and Jenny, are recurring, and I don’t see that changing – I can’t see them indisputably writing the Doctor as anything other than vaguely ace-ish and varying levels of heteroromantic, and with the show’s need for the main companion to be a sort of Everywoman to all viewers, it tends to avoid character wrinkles that make her stand out.  However, all three of those recurring characters have gotten some good play over the seasons, and there has been a fair amount of sexual diversity among one-shot characters.  The RTD era in particular has a nice practice of casual inclusion.

And for me, that’s one of the best things about Who’s LGBTQ track record.  Jack is a pretty revolutionary character and I adore him, and I love that Vastra and Jenny exist, but some battles are fought on smaller ground, and Who has excelled here.  I really like the Cassinis, the pair of little old married ladies from “Gridlock,” and William Shakespeare flirting with both Martha and the Doctor; I also enjoy Canton, the ex-FBI agent from the Silence two-part at the start of series 6.  Sometimes it’s just a nod or a throwaway line or two men dancing in the background at Donna’s wedding reception – tiny references that don’t have to be a Big Deal, because it’s just life.  It’s a big universe with plenty of room in it for queer people, and the show recognizes that they (mostly on the LGB front, let’s be honest) can be incorporated into the fabric of a story without it being some sort of crusade.

Not that all minor references to orientation are offhand.  Particularly during episodes set in the past, the show has addressed social discrimination and hardships faced by queer people.  Mentions of Roger’s secret relationship with Davenport the footman in “The Unicorn and the Wasp” are initially light and winking, but when confronted with the struggles of the closet, Donna comments, “1926 – it’s more like the Dark Ages.”  Additionally, though Tommy from “The Idiot’s Lantern” is never explicitly identified as gay, I find a strong ring of homophobia and gendered expectations in his fraught relationship with his old-guard father.  The talk about Tommy being a mama’s boy feels coded to me, and the discussion of “beating it out of him” is especially chilling.

Trans representation is admittedly thinner on the ground – the only clear character references are in “The End of the World,” when Cassandra mentions having been a little boy, and Susan the horse in “A Town Called Mercy.”  That said, there are a few instances where, in the future, it’s evident that people account for genders outside the traditional binary.  It’s usually when a crowd is being addressed, as in, “ladies, gentlemen, multisex, undecided, or robot” (“The Long Game”) or “ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon (“Midnight.”)  I like that – having actual trans characters would obviously be better, but I like the acknowledgement that times change and society’s definition of “normal” thankfully changes with it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What! No Beer? (1933)

The last of Buster Keaton’s MGM talkies, What!  No Beer? is pretty light on the good and heavy on the bad and ugly.  To be honest, the things I’d heard about it made me wary about seeing it at all; however, completist that I am, I couldn’t not watch a Buster movie I could get my hands on.  So, here we are.  It’s not Free and Easy (I’m not sure if anything else on earth is Free and Easy,) but it’s not good.

In this film, Buster plays yet another Elmer, this one a quiet taxidermist in love with the gold-digging Hortense.  His desire to fill his pocketbook and win her affection leads him to begin a joint venture with his pal Jimmy (once again, Buster’s partnered with Jimmy Durante.)  The end of Prohibition has just been announced, and Jimmy plans to hit the ground running with a ready-to-go brewery.  Unfortunately, they jump the gun and start brewing before the repeal actually goes into effect, and they soon find themselves the targets of temperate cops and rival bootleggers alike.

The Good – Not a whole lot.  Buster does get in a pretty smart save for the climax, and there’s a seduction scene that’s amusing (though the one in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is a lot funnier.)  Really, my most glowing recommendation is that it’s not as bad as I feared it would be.

The Bad – This is the most unbalanced Buster-Durante partnership yet.  Although I can’t blame Durante for it (more on that later,) his Jimmy just runs roughshod over Buster’s Elmer at every turn.  It’s all loud, boisterous jokes and very little physical comedy, and the overall plot is a bit “farce meets frat-boy comedy in the ‘30s.”  It’s not a terribly interesting story, and Buster doesn’t play a terrible interesting character.  I wouldn’t say he’s actively dumb for the most part, just accident-prone, but he doesn’t really feel present throughout much of the film.  He’s just kind of there.  Which leads into…

The Ugly – It was after this movie that MGM fired Buster, and you can see why.  His real-life drinking was completely out of control at this point, and it shows onscreen.  There are scenes in which his speech is noticeably slurred, his performance is disinterested and sluggish throughout, and it’s clear that his coordination and athleticism aren’t what they ought to be.  Like I said, it’s not as bad as I thought it’d be – he’s not blatantly drunk or hung-over from start to finish, and there are only a handful of scenes where it’s evident – but it’s still painful to see.  He loved movies so much, but by this point, that love of performing, creating, and innovating had been so thoroughly beaten down that he just couldn’t keep it together anymore.  It’s why I get why MGM let him go, because this obviously wasn’t sustainable, and in the grand scheme of things, it was probably best for Buster as well that he was taken out of that situation.  It’s also why, although I’m not much of a Durante fan and don’t like seeing him featured so heavily over Buster, I can’t fault him for it here, because Buster just wasn’t in any condition to carry this movie.  Durante did everything he could to make it work, and he wasn’t getting a lot of help.  If you watch this film, I recommend having one of Buster’s better later projects on standby (my personal suggestions would be Grand Slam Opera or The Railrodder,) so when it’s over, you can remind yourself that Buster got himself cleaned up, built his old talent and timing back up again, and went back to making some pretty delightful comedies.  Hang in there, Buster – it gets better.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Passionate Plumber (1932)

Well, it’s not terrible.  That’s about the most I can say about this MGM Buster Keaton talkie.  It’s the first film that pairs Buster with Jimmy Durante, and it’s evident from the start that it’s not a good combo – Durante’s loudmouth brand of humor runs roughshod over Buster’s quieter style.  Put that together with an odd plot and minimal physical comedy, and you don’t wind up with a great film.

Buster plays Elmer, an American plumber working in Paris who gets mixed up in the farcical romantic muddle between the lovely Patricia and her smooth-talking boyfriend Tony.  After he accidentally winds up owing Patricia a lot of money (who he’s naturally in love with,) Elmer is hired to pose as the wealthy woman’s lover; she knows that the married Tony is no good for her but, unable to give him up, she banks on him bowing out when he sees her with another man.  Elmer takes to his new job with complete dedication, which becomes an annoyance to Patricia when she decides she wants Tony after all but Elmer doesn’t accept being called off.  (Like with the physical exam scene in Doughboys, Buster mined this movie for its comedic potential and later used it to make a much funnier short:  She’s Oil Mine follows the first two reels of this film, in which Elmer is first mistaken for Patricia’s lover and forced into an absurd duel with Tony, pretty closely.)

The Good – What little physical comedy there is works wonderfully, especially a scene of Elmer causing accidental havoc at a casino.  There’s also a nice run of gags with Elmer clumsily trying to serve Patricia breakfast in bed and a fantastically-Buster-ish moment of Elmer attempting to conceal a small dog on his person.  Aside from that, Elmer has a few good flashes of intelligence – he’s both a plumber and an amateur inventor, and he dreams up a pretty clever means of getting money to buy a suit.

The Bad – It’s a good thing Jimmy Durante’s McCracken (Patricia’s chauffeur) doesn’t spend all his time attached to Elmer, because Durante just steamrolls Buster.  His comic energy is completely different, and it’s tiring to watch him shout and mug while Buster waits for his turn to do anything.  The movie itself is largely unfunny, lots of forced farce that feels like it’s just going through the motions.  The only real laughs come when everybody else stops butting in and lets Buster do his thing, and even he seems listless through stretches of the film.  I don’t know if his personal problems were starting to interfere with his work by this time or if he simply hated the movie, but there are sections where he just doesn’t feel like Buster.

The Ugly – As with Sidewalks of New York, Elmer’s dimwittedness is all the more frustrating because we see hints that he really is a smart guy.  So, it’s aggravating to see him playing the dope again.  Also, I really dislike the plot in the second half, where Patricia wants Elmer to leave her alone but he won’t go.  She tries to evade him and complains about being a prisoner in her own house, and Elmer just keeps talking about his contract.  The whole thing is weird to me – other than plot contrivance, I don’t get why Elmer insists on hanging around.  Is it a patriarchal “I know what’s best for you” attitude towards the little woman?  Is he just so in love with her that he won’t leave after he finally gets an “in?”  Is he too dense to realize that she doesn’t want him there and that irritating her won’t pay off his debt?  I can’t tell you the answer, but each of these explanations leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Sidewalks of New York (1931)

Yep, it’s time for another Buster Keaton MGM talkie.  Despite a fine performance from Buster, I can see why he didn’t like it – the plot is sloppy and overly complicated, and pretty much every scene not involving Buster just isn’t funny.  It’s not aggressively bad, but it’s incredibly “meh,” far below Buster’s talents.

Basically, the story is that Buster’s Mr. Harmon is a wealthy man who, having fallen in love with a woman who lives in a tenement he owns, sets out to improve the lot of the guttersnipes of the city.  This involves, variously, a public gymnasium, a boxing match, and a ridiculous play, and there’s a bungled-yet-inventive proposal thrown in for good measure.  (Harmon is interesting in that he’s really not like any of Buster’s rich dandies.  He’s a little naïve and misguided, but he isn’t entirely dependent on servants to get by – while he relies a lot on his subordinate Mr. Poggle, it’s more because he gets tongue-tied or bewildered than because he doesn’t know how to fend for himself.)

The Good – There’s some decent physical comedy from Buster, nice tumbling and a few lengthy routines.  I especially like the extended chase/fight sequence at the end, and I always love the muay thai-ish move where he launches himself at someone to kick them in the chest.  There are funny gags outside of the slapstick as well – there’s a great scene of Harmon trying to carve a duck and some excellent laughs when he takes the stand in a court case.  Harmon and Poggle (Cliff Edwards, who had a similar sidekick role in Doughboys) make an amusing team, and I like that Harmon is decently industrious.  He often gets things wrong, but he never really stops trying.  Also, while I’m not crazy about Margie as a love interest, Harmon’s reactions to her are terrific.  Buster always plays smitten so well – really funny and sweet.

The Bad – Like Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, this film feels, tonally, like two movies stitched together, but while the former combines slapstick with bedroom farce, this one seems to combine slapstick with melodrama.  There’s this whole big subplot with Margie’s younger brother as a hoodlum getting swept up in a life of crime, with Margie of course desperate to save him.  These scenes are big and overwrought, and they feel out of place beside Buster’s comedy.  Also, the narrative feels really cobbled together.  Lots of stuff appears to happen just cuz, with no logical purpose.  For instance, this isn’t the first Buster film to feature a disastrous theatrical performance, but these sequences fit organically into movies like Back Stage, Spite Marriage, and Speak Easily.  The films build up to them such that the onstage hijinks are the natural conclusion.  Here, the play is shoved in so haphazardly that I honestly don’t know the in-story reason that it’s happening.

The Ugly – Like I said, Harmon shows some good initiative and drives a solid chunk of the action, but there a few scenes that veer uncomfortably into the dopey persona that started in this era.  I mentioned that Harmon taking the stand is greatly comedic, but Harmon on the stand isn’t much fun; he’s way too dumb, and since he’s not characterized that way for the brunt of the film, it’s more aggravating when the script starts knocking off brain cells at random.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Spanish Apartment – The Ugly

It’s a shame that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is set up to descend in quality, because each review gets further from the film’s good qualities.  Still, we’re finishing up today with my last post on The Spanish Apartment, and it’s the grimmest of the lot:  the ugly.  (Note:  some spoilers for this film and its sequel, Russian Dolls.)  The good news is that it’s not overwhelming.  I didn’t pick up on it the first few viewings, and even then, you see similar issues in (far too) many films, but it’s disappointing to see in a film that has so much to love.  Isn’t that always the way?  In this case, the issue is how it handles female characters.  Virtually every major woman in the film is written mostly in service of Xavier.  Now, it’s his story, and he’s obviously the focal point and the most fleshed-out character, but the women, more so than the men, are characterized in problematic gender ways.  This is especially true with Martine, Anne-Sophie, and Isabelle.

To start, I’ll point out that all three have shading outside their relationships with Xavier.  Anne-Sophie is a repressed newlywed afraid to venture out into her new country.  Isabelle has a girlfriend, pride in her Walloon identity, and strong opinions.  Even Martine, the thinnest of the three, has her own thoughts and emotions.  However, all three serve a much larger, less nuanced purpose in Xavier’s story.  Anne-Sophie is taken with Xavier almost from the get-go.  She appears lingerie-clad in Xavier’s subconscious and otherwise, her weak rebuff of his advances crumbles at his romantic prowess, and when they begin an affair, her recent marriage is so far from her thoughts that she keeps trying to paw at Xavier even when her husband is home.  Similarly, though Isabelle is gay and, as such, out of the running as a bedmate, the film continually goes to the “hot lesbian” well with her, always for Xavier’s benefit.  He’s the only one to hear her story of being hit on at a dance class, and she gives him a how-to in seducing women, first demonstrating on him and later enlisted her girlfriend for an exhibition.  Furthermore, her lingering glances and comments that it’s “a shame” he’s not a girl feed into het-male fantasies of “turning” a lesbian.  Finally, Martine is Xavier’s girlfriend, but she only plays a part in the film when it’s convenient.  When he needs a push into another woman’s arms, she’s judgmental of his new friends and nags him over the phone, and when he needs an emotional struggle, she obligingly pops up to break his heart with news that she’s been seeing someone.

I should note that Xavier never feels the least bit bad about cheating on Martine or cuckolding Anne-Sophie’s husband, but when he hears that Martine has stepped out on him, it’s all sad music, wallowing, and tearful stares at a photograph of them.  It’s all about his pain and her betrayal, no sense of regret or understanding.  Worse, the film never really acknowledges this as a problem.  No one points out that Xavier was in fact cheating on her and helping another woman cheat on someone else, and maybe he doesn’t have much license to throw a pity party.

It’s interesting, because almost all the female characters are more detailed than the non-Xavier males, but their storylines tend to hinge on their romantic entanglement with/ability to titillate him.  It’s a bit of a camouflage – because they’re rounder, you might not notice it at first, but once you do, it’s unmistakable.  Wendy, who mostly escapes this gendered focus, is admittedly pretty well fleshed-out; however, while she’s not really on Xavier’s romantic or sexual radar in this movie, she becomes a major contender in Russian Dolls.  It’s also noteworthy, I think, that Soledad, the one woman with a solid boyfriend she remains faithful to, is definitely the one with the least shading.  Is it because we know nothing will happen between her and Xavier? 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Spanish Apartment – The Bad

The Spanish Apartment is an interesting movie to write about because, as much as I connect with it, admire the stylish direction, and adore the characters, its problematic areas are glaring.  It kind of floors me that a film can succeed so much at some things and stumble just as greatly at others.  Today, we have the second of three posts about this oddly contentious movie.

I mentioned yesterday how much I love the cultural clutter of this film.  I like the way the disparate roommates are so surprisingly functional amidst their chaos, the way the different languages and values sit alongside each other.  The movie does so well with this comfortable, if noisy, melding – it feels absolutely genuine, so understated and natural.

So, it’s startling when the theme of more specific cultural clash in the film is so overdrawn and heavy-handed.  This element largely comes through the introduction of Wendy’s brother William – not a student, William has been traveling Europe and comes to stay with the group while he’s in Spain.  He’s boorish and tactless, and his first night in the apartment introduces the whole gang to his preferred source of loudmouth humor:  national stereotypes.  Yes, he’s immature and self-assured, a dangerous combination, but he demonstrates first an utter inability to read the obvious discomfort of the room and later an insistent refusal to accept overt chastisement.

It’s unpleasant to watch him monologue about how “Spanish people do this” and “German people do this” and so on, and Wendy goes down in my estimation when she doesn’t put a stop to it (the one instance where she really takes William to task, after a particularly hurtful incident with Tobias, she doesn’t hold her resolve for very long.)  The whole thing is coarse and too obvious, and since I’ve already established how wholly I’m in the roommates’ corner, it only serves to make William my enemy.  It doesn’t matter when he comes through for his sister later, because the damage has long since been done.

This business is especially clunky because of how overdone it is.  In all of William’s stupid “jokes,” he never says anything that even approaches funny-yet-distasteful.  Not that being funny gives prejudice a pass, but offense is frequently a part of humor and would at least allow his continued insistence on it to make a bit of sense.  However, these sequences are utterly humorless.  Literally, they involve nothing more than him spouting cultural generalizations, badly mimicking languages he doesn’t speak, and then laughing hysterically about it.  There’s no point to it, and if I were in the group’s place, the painful lack of humor would make it uncomfortable even without the ignorant bigotry.

None of this is helped by the fact that most of the characters are drawn pretty thinly along national lines.  Don’t get me wrong – I still adore them and the little details in the writing, and the actors breathe so much life into them that they feel a lot more fully realized than they are.  However, it’s no accident that, for example, Italian Alessandro could either be called laidback or lazy while German Tobias could be labeled either precise or anal retentive.  The occasions when William gets dressed down for his clichés are great, but they don’t land as well when you notice the boilerplate framework at the core of most of the characters.  There’s a line between cultural norms and cultural stereotypes, and the film sometimes ventures too close to the wrong side of it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Spanish Apartment (2002, R) – The Good

This is the first time I’ve done a Good/Bad/Ugly write-up for something that’s not a Buster Keaton MGM film, so make of that distinction what you will.  However, I rewatched this film lately and was reminded of how massively flawed it is, and yet how there’s something about it I just love.

Xavier is a Parisian grad student who, wanting to make himself more employable, decides to spend a year in Barcelona going to school and becoming fluent in Spanish – global economy and all.  Along the way, he shares an apartment with an eclectic gaggle of international students, and somewhere in the multicultural hodgepodge, he starts to find himself.  Coming-of-age story on overdrive, it’s more of a journey than a story, but while it doesn’t always know where it’s headed, the vivid characters keep that journey engaging.

Because I have a lot more to say about the successes and sins of this movie than the likes of Speak Easily or Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, I’m dividing up my review over several days, and we’re starting with the best feet forward.  The direction is crisp and eye-catching, which goes a long way toward helping it stand out from other films of its kind.  I really like the creative audio/visual techniques thrown in; they give the film a lot of personality.

Xavier’s position as the film’s narrator is strong.  Sure, he has plenty of mid-20s identity angst, and he has his share of poor qualities (more on that another day,) but he’s supposed to be sort of searching and rudderless.  I like the way he gradually becomes part of Barcelona, the way the city adopts him and he stops being just a Parisian.  When his girlfriend comes to visit, it’s clear that they’ve already drifted – he’s changing so much so fast, and she’s stayed behind.

Without a doubt, though, I love this movie for its ensemble.  When Xavier is first interviewed as a prospective roommate, he’s enchanted by the other students, thinking, “It was like I’d always lived in this mess.”  He loves the noise of it all, the love and the squabbling, the multilingual mishmash and cultural potpourri that permeates the apartment.  Though most of his friends are drawn lightly without much shading, the whole experience feels so specific and lived-in.  Like Xavier, I can’t get enough of their camaraderie, and I love the confused way their conversation flits between languages.  I also like the many little touches to film paints of their dynamic, like the way their fridge organization system descends into entropy, or the cheat-sheet by the phone which says “So-and-so isn’t here” in each roommate’s native language.  Scatterbrained Alessandro, industrious Wendy, fastidious Tobias, lively Soledad, serious Lars, and outspoken Isabelle are absolutely the reason to see the film. 

While it’s firmly Xavier’s story, my favorite moments aren’t focused on him at all.  I love Tobias and Wendy discussing a personal matter in Spanish so her visiting brother won’t understand them.  I love Alessandro dancing down the street to class, the only person in the world for all he cares.  I love Wendy grumbling to herself when a fuse blows and it falls to her to sort things out.  I love Soledad riding on the handlebars of Lars’s bike, I love Isabelle squeezing herself onto an already-crowded couch, and I love the shot of them all peering out of Wendy’s bedroom Scooby Doo-style when Xavier is talking to the landlord.  For two hours, these characters are my Italian-English-German-Spanish-Danish-Belgian friends, and that’s fantastic.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Doughboys (1930)

Another Buster Keaton MGM talkie, one that happily continues my trend of “really not all that bad.”  It’s a bit like Speak Easily, a decent-ish, unremarkable film.  Though it has a few memorable scenes, its chief sin is that it squanders its biggest asset:  Buster.

If the name didn’t give it away, Doughboys is a World War I comedy (probably not many of those.)  Buster plays Elmer J. Stiverson, a less memorable echo of his rich dandies in The Navigator, Battling Butler, and The Saphead.  Trying to secure a new chauffeur, Elmer mistakes the recruiting office for the employment bureau and accidently enlists.  The silver lining is that Mary, the girl he loves, is there as well, entertaining the troops.  Even better, while she turned up her nose at him back home, her opinion has improved now that he’s a brave soldier going off to fight for freedom.  Now if only they can make it to France and back in one piece.

The Good – Although Elmer isn’t as funny or well-characterized as Rollo in The Navigator or Alfred in Battling Butler, he’s a great improvement over the dopes in Free and Easy and Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.  What’s more, he’s fairly resourceful and proactive; he holds his ground against his sneering drill sergeant and even plays a pretty clever joke on him.  It’s great to see Buster again playing someone who can make things happen in his own story.  I’m also a fan of Mary, who might be my favorite MGM love interest so far.  She’s cool and gorgeous, and she and Elmer have sweet chemistry together.  I like the nods to Buster’s own military service, like Elmer’s ill-fitting uniform (he looks like a 14-year-old in his dad’s suit,) and there are a few standout moments.  There’s a great scene of Elmer singing and playing the ukulele with some fellow soldiers that’s a lot of fun, and Buster’s wonderfully acrobatic performance as an impromptu drag act in the company show is a riot.  Some of the dancing in this scene is  reminiscent of his dance with Fatty Arbuckle in Back Stage, and it’s made even more fun by Elmer’s attempts to extricate himself from the situation.  A great sequence, and very Buster.

The Bad – As perfect and hilarious as Buster’s tumbling is in the drag routine, there’s far too little of it.  This film is woefully short on physical comedy, and what little there is mostly features Elmer tripping unimpressively over things, with none of the eye-catching twists, flips, and rolls that Buster does so well.  Quick example –in the recruiting office, Elmer resists taking his clothes off for the physical, and the military doctor has to forcibly strip him.  Amusing, but over in… maybe thirty seconds?  A handful of years later, Buster reused this idea for the short General Nuisance, and the half-clothed scuffle that results is hysterical.  Here, though?  Hardly anything.  Additionally, Elmer and Mary’s cute dynamic is hampered by tired misunderstanding-based conflicts.  More than anything, though, it’s just a bland movie.  It’s not hugely funny – for the most part, the comedy only elicits bemused chuckles (the physical comedy in the drag scene being the major exception, because that’s simply outstanding.)  It’s just there, nothing special.  Given Buster’s incredible comic talents, he’s wasted in this okay-but-unmemorable film.

The Ugly – Really, there’s nothing to report here, and that’s nice.  Although the film itself is too staid to merit a lot of praise, it’s a relief to see Buster in an MGM movie without any cringe-worthy moments.  This is perhaps the reason it was Buster’s favorite from this period; even though he has more comedic material in, say, Parlor, Bedroom and Bath or Speak Easily, there’s nothing in it that feels like it was specifically included to humiliate him or break his spirit.  Yay?