It's a little ironic to watch a silent film looking back in time 30 years to the advent of the first automobile, one focused on how this progress eliminated horse-drawn carriages as a means of travel - even if the silent film has an innovation of its own, Vitaphone, a segue to talkies. Naturally, the film focuses on how horse owners lobbied Washington and utilizing gerrymandered districts and the electoral college to block all progress on the automobile. Haha, just kidding, that never happens.
This is a creaky story told at a slow pace, with various filler, including some juggling from William Demarest and a party trick involving pouring water through a funnel and down an unsuspecting guy's pants. It's also got a fair dose of melodrama, e.g. An elongated sequence of a horse dying, a horse being whipped, and the hokey stuff at the end, complete with a car fire rendered through touching up the actual film. The ultimate moral is that you can't block progress. (Was inflicting the internal combustion engine on the world progress? I digress).
The film is worth the time if you're a fan of very old cars, such as the 1903 Stevens-Duryea Runabout or the 1901 Ford 999, and it was pretty cool to see the footage of the latter being driven by Barney Oldfield when he became the first driver to reach 60 mph on a circular track. I loved it how when these old "horseless carriages" backfired, a plume of toxic smoke would envelop the seated passengers, and there's got to be some symbolism in that. It was also pretty sad to learn that Charles Emmett Mack (who plays the son) would die in a car crash four months before this film was released. Overall it was hard to get too excited about this one though.
This is a creaky story told at a slow pace, with various filler, including some juggling from William Demarest and a party trick involving pouring water through a funnel and down an unsuspecting guy's pants. It's also got a fair dose of melodrama, e.g. An elongated sequence of a horse dying, a horse being whipped, and the hokey stuff at the end, complete with a car fire rendered through touching up the actual film. The ultimate moral is that you can't block progress. (Was inflicting the internal combustion engine on the world progress? I digress).
The film is worth the time if you're a fan of very old cars, such as the 1903 Stevens-Duryea Runabout or the 1901 Ford 999, and it was pretty cool to see the footage of the latter being driven by Barney Oldfield when he became the first driver to reach 60 mph on a circular track. I loved it how when these old "horseless carriages" backfired, a plume of toxic smoke would envelop the seated passengers, and there's got to be some symbolism in that. It was also pretty sad to learn that Charles Emmett Mack (who plays the son) would die in a car crash four months before this film was released. Overall it was hard to get too excited about this one though.