A series of amusing scenarios that as a feature film don't quite gel: as others have commented here, seeing the same slapstick gags over and over again can get monotonous. Still, some of the set pieces are quite amusing, the one featuring Marie Dressler (who looks like a cross between Mrs. Potato Head and Fatty Arbuckle in drag here) getting tipsy on a sip of alcohol, the movie within a movie and the spoof of exhibition dancing being among the highlights. Although modern viewers may come to this film expecting it to be a Chaplin feature (who atypically plays a villain), it is in fact very much Marie Dressler's filmmost of the film's comedy comes from watching the sometimes aggravating but essentially innocent Tillie flailing about like a giant, goggle eyed baby as she tries to cope with her unscrupulous gigolo lover and life in the big city. The film also does a sly take on that hoary leftover Victorian cliché, the distant wealthy uncle who conveniently dies: here the uncle rather inconveniently comes back to life ("not so darn dead after all" as a title card dryly observes). The film also features Mabel Normand as Chaplins' moll girlfriend (her petite beauty makes her a good foil for Dressler), and the Keystone Cops.
Review of Tillie's Punctured Romance
