User Reviews

Although somewhat plain overall, this Charley Bowers/Mutt and Jeff feature has a number of interesting features. Bowers and Bud Fisher worked together on a great many animated features in this series, but almost nothing remains of them, making this a rare chance to see what the series was like. There are also at least a couple of good gags in this one that are interesting as previews of the material in some of Bowers's later movies.

All of the action takes place in a restaurant in which Jeff is the cook and Mutt is the waiter - and it is not long at all before things get out of hand. Some of the animated slapstick is a but routine, but a couple of things stand out. At least a couple of the gags involve the kind of gadgetry that Bowers later used to great effect in some of his own films, and in particular there are one or two specific gags that he used in a more elaborate form in "He Done His Best".

The gag with the woman's pancakes is also of interest, because it shows, in a simpler way, the kind of unexpected transformation that Bowers would later perfect and use as part of some of his best visual effects.

All of these features make this otherwise unexceptional little movie worth seeing, at least for those who enjoy Bowers's later, marvelously inventive features.

Curiously IMDb seems to have got everything back to front as far as Bud Fisher and Charley Bowers are concerned. So the films of 1925-1926 are all credited to Bowers although he had been sacked long before this for fiddling the books (according to Wikipedia he was sacked twice in 1918 and 1921). On the other hand, with the exception of this film, the early films are all credited to Fisher although only the very first films (1913), distributed by Pathé were made by Fisher. Between 1916 and 1918 they were made by the Barré-Bowers studios by Raoul Barré and Charley Bowers.

Of the earliest films, Huntley Archives have three films on youtube (their Nos. 2839, 6754 and 6882) which they date to the 1910s. In the first case they are certainly wrong (this is an abbreviated version of the 1926 film Where Am I?) and the second looks later too (Last Laugh?) but they may be right in believing that the third is an early Fisher/Pathé films. Difficult to identify because we know so little about them but it could be perhaps be Mutt's Moneymaking Plan of 1913.

Domestic Difficulties survives from 1916 (perhaps still distributed by Pathé) and this film (distributed by Fox) from 1918, and these are the only two that I have been able to find on which Bowers may possibly have worked. Since, however, the Bowers-Barré partnership broke up in this year, it is not even certain that he worked on this film. However some of the more elegant touches (well described by another reviewer) make it seem reasonably likely that this is a Bowers-Barré film.

These early films, both Fisher's own and the Barré/Bowers films, are very simple in style. have domestic themes and tend to make use of speech-bubbles (like Bowers' own propaganda/public service cartoon of 1918, A.W.O.L and like the comic-strips themselves.

The later films have considerably more elaborate fantasy themes with frankly rather idiotic story-lines. They are perhaps more conventionally cinematic but, even when one can find the originals rather than the ghastly colourised remakes from the 1930s and/or 1970s, lack the simple charm of the earlier ones. I find Mutt and Jeff cartoons very unfunny and, in my view, this rather more elegant little film is quite the best of the surviving cartoons.

The Extra-Quick Lunch (1918)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This early Mutt and Jeff cartoon from Charley Bowers will please fans of the series, although most people probably won't take too much from it. The setting is a restaurant where Jeff is working as a waiter and poor Mutt is in the back cooking the food. We see a couple people come into the restaurant to order and see the comic timing of Mutt's cooking. In all honesty, there's really nothing overly great here, although like I said, if you're a fan of the filmmaker or the series then you'll probably get a few smiles out of it. The biggest problem is that there just really isn't anything overly funny here. The animation itself is quite simple but well-done.