Being an avid Buster Keaton fan, I first found out about this movie through the Great Stoneface's negative take on it. In short, Keaton thought the Little Elf's trying to murder his sweetheart in the woods was a bad decision, one destined to make the audience dislike his character. Keaton was undoubtedly a master of comedy, but I have to disagree with him here, mainly because whatever Langdon's storytelling aims were, he does not seem to have been interested in making the audience weep for his character or even like him.
LONG PANTS is a weird one in general. Langdon's character is a young go-getter who falls for a flapper femme fatale despite the urgings of his community to settle down with a diabetes sweet ingenue (the previously-mentioned would-be murder victim). Langdon is never presented as someone to root for so much as a grotesque to be baffled by, so him deciding that murder is the only way to rid himself of a troublesome obligation isn't really as movie-killing as Keaton claimed. The ingenue is also quite annoying, both to Langdon and the audience, so killing her, while absurd, wouldn't be enough to make the audience dislike Langdon. It's just another bizarre event in a film that is a chain of weirdness from start to finish.
Overall, bizarre is how Harry Langdon strikes me. He does not inspire the emotional connection that Chaplin, Lloyd, or Keaton do. While those guys are all clowns, they still have stakes in their films, which were grounded enough in reality to make their goals matter. Langdon inhabits a borderline surreal universe in which he often comes across as alien with his blend of childlike slowness and adult urges. Don't take that as a knock on the guy-- his movies are fascinating because of the weirdness, but it does make them difficult to judge by the usual standards, hence, my disagreement with Keaton. His criticisms just don't apply to whatever Langdon and his team were trying to achieve... even though I admit, I have no clue exactly what that might have been.
LONG PANTS is a weird one in general. Langdon's character is a young go-getter who falls for a flapper femme fatale despite the urgings of his community to settle down with a diabetes sweet ingenue (the previously-mentioned would-be murder victim). Langdon is never presented as someone to root for so much as a grotesque to be baffled by, so him deciding that murder is the only way to rid himself of a troublesome obligation isn't really as movie-killing as Keaton claimed. The ingenue is also quite annoying, both to Langdon and the audience, so killing her, while absurd, wouldn't be enough to make the audience dislike Langdon. It's just another bizarre event in a film that is a chain of weirdness from start to finish.
Overall, bizarre is how Harry Langdon strikes me. He does not inspire the emotional connection that Chaplin, Lloyd, or Keaton do. While those guys are all clowns, they still have stakes in their films, which were grounded enough in reality to make their goals matter. Langdon inhabits a borderline surreal universe in which he often comes across as alien with his blend of childlike slowness and adult urges. Don't take that as a knock on the guy-- his movies are fascinating because of the weirdness, but it does make them difficult to judge by the usual standards, hence, my disagreement with Keaton. His criticisms just don't apply to whatever Langdon and his team were trying to achieve... even though I admit, I have no clue exactly what that might have been.