Nell Shipman attempted a plot to lead up to a chase finale in "Back to God's Country" of the previous year, and she failed miserably. This time, she did better, although it seems pointless. "Something New" hardly has a plot lying outside of the chase. There's a brief premise, which sets up the hero (co-author and Shipman's boyfriend) to have to save the girl (played by Shipman), then it's nothing but an exciting, implausible chase from there. Of course, it plays out like an hour-long advertisement for a Maxwell Sedan, but the entire movie is congruously ridiculous. It doesn't seem that she learned much from the last-minute rescue films of D.W. Griffith or its parodies by Mack Sennett and other comedians, which she's imitating.
One point of interest is that Shipman wrote and directed herself into the film as the writer of the film's story, which has as its protagonist a writer (Shipman again), although she doesn't do much else clever or humorous with it, even though she attempted to. Again, others had pioneered the writer's joke in the intertitles, like Anita Loos with "Wild and Woolly" and other Douglas Fairbanks's vehicles and Frances Marion with "A Girl's Folly" (both 1917) and others. At least, Shipman gives the impression that she didn't take herself or the film seriously--and neither do I. "Something New", despite its claim, is hackneyed.
One point of interest is that Shipman wrote and directed herself into the film as the writer of the film's story, which has as its protagonist a writer (Shipman again), although she doesn't do much else clever or humorous with it, even though she attempted to. Again, others had pioneered the writer's joke in the intertitles, like Anita Loos with "Wild and Woolly" and other Douglas Fairbanks's vehicles and Frances Marion with "A Girl's Folly" (both 1917) and others. At least, Shipman gives the impression that she didn't take herself or the film seriously--and neither do I. "Something New", despite its claim, is hackneyed.