The Round-Up
The standard legend states that Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's comedy career effectively ended with the scandal of his arrest and trials. This film serves to set the record straight: Arbuckle's comedy career ended when he walked away from Comique, his own company where he had complete creative control (and the fat man always got the girl!), and signed up for The Big Paper offered in exchange for putting his star name and face on this torturously stupid trash. Although it doesn't even pretend to be a comedy, the few moments of Arbuckle attempting to add humor all fall flat. Yet without any cowboy star, its masquerade as a western was doomed from the start. So all we get is utterly contrived maudlin melodrama worse than the kind Arbuckle hilariously parodied in Out West (1918), and lame attempts at hick cowpoke humor.
But also starring Wallace Beery as The Greaser, in a portrayal so menacing it threatens to leap off the screen (perhaps fueled by his own lust for the Big Paper given to a lesser actor?). Yet the film, in its relentless striving for rock-bottom, even found a way to undo Beery's good work.
Sure, this flick pulled in The Big Paper way back in the day, but now it looks terribly dated - even when compared to contemporary and older movies - while Comique still shines bright.