American Aristocracy

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Douglas Fairbanks, barely past his first year of movie-making, not only rolls, climbs a tree, jumps fences/cars/benches, climbs onto a moving car then jumps off and hangs from a wire, and gratuitously does every other animal act trick (other than roll over and beg - that's the one he used to get this gig), but also spanks and kisses his servant, pole dances, endlessly swaggers like an ape with a broomstick up its ass, and generally works hard to be overconfident, overbearing, and terribly annoying - i.e. the embodiment of the imagined ethos of early twentieth century white American maleness. A comedy, minus the laughs, more like news from home - which is, a title card tells us, generally bad.

Online: Internet Archive