User Reviews

I have heard that Chaplin rushed to produce A Day's Pleasure because the studio was demanding product while he was working on The Kid, but I have to disagree that it is a below-average comedy. It is a little different from the fare that we have come to expect from him in his short comedies, but I think this is as much a reflection of his desire to do something different as it is of the fact that he rushed through the production to satisfy the studio while he made another film, which he was more than likely more interested in.

It should be kept in mind that Chaplin had been involved in the production of nearly 100 short silent comedies by the time A Day's Pleasure came around, so I can forgive him a little distraction in it's production. If nothing else, I find the film to be particularly interesting, especially at the beginning, because the building that Chaplin and the family leave from at the opening of the film is Chaplin's office in Los Angeles, where I live. It's hard to mistake those mountains in the background!

One thing that I found to be interesting is that at one point in the opening sequence, a man walks into the frame in the background, and the trivia on the IMDb claims that he was most likely a studio employee, which seems like a preposterous notion, since the man not only walks right into the frame during shooting, but also pauses to see what's going on after he turns back. If he was a studio employee, it must have been his first day!

Also of some note is a rather disturbing portrayal of the black characters. Granted, 1919 was a very different time than now, but like Hitchcock's The Ring, which featured a sadly slave-like black man grinning gleefully as dirty, backwards-looking white people dunked him in a tub of water, A Day's Pleasure features a band of black musicians which doesn't say anything good about Chaplin's idea of black people (what is the meaning of "Three minds with but a single thought?").

While I agree that some of the material is a little different from many of Chaplin's other short films, the sequences here are certainly not without merit, particularly a hilarious bit with an uncooperative deck chair midway through the film. Some of the behavior of Chaplin and his other actors in the film is a little odd (at one point the family is on a crowded passenger ship on which everyone seems to be falling asleep on their feet in the middle of the day), but I should think that Chaplin made a graceful exit from the short silent comedy, if not an eventful one.

Charlie Chaplin's pictures at First National studios vary immensely in quality. He was at the peak of his comic professionalism, and by and large his output at the time reflects that. And yet, he was also making preparations for his debut full-length feature, and as a result a handful of his shorts appear to be simple potboilers, rough compilations of whatever material he had left over.

A Day's Pleasure is a case in point. The story could not be really described as a plot, more a mere sequence of events. While the various little episodes all relate to a day trip of Charlie and his family, they could really be cut-offs from a longer picture. And while Chaplin is inventive and distinctive as always, this lack of focus means the gags never really get to build to anything or have the of kind of wider relation to story and character that would make them screamingly funny. For some reason, perhaps in compensation, there are far too many "witty" title cards – verbal humour always having been Chaplin's Achilles Heel.

Neither does A Day's Pleasure make the most of Chaplin's regular crew of supporting players. Edna Purviance is introduced as Charlie's wife, not a love interest to be won over, and as such she becomes little more than a human prop, never centre stage for a second. There is no main antagonist for Charlie to play off, and so the gags of him winding up some pompous adversary are a bit thin on the ground.

And yet, A Day's Pleasure is still an example of Chaplin's care and craftsmanship in constructing a comedy picture. During the hold up at the crossroads, easily the funniest segment, there's a great use of space. We have the traffic cop in the foreground, while all the business with Charlie's car is going on in a far corner. So why not the other way round? Because it is important we keep our eye on the cop as well as the car. Chaplin is effectively balancing out our levels of interest. If the traffic cop was in the background we would ignore him, whereas Chaplin knows he can safely put himself in the background as we will focus on him wherever he is on screen. This is intelligent comedy direction.

And so to the all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 8 (8 for – pity poor Tom Wilson)

All of the deft comic touches one expects from a Charlie Chaplin short are in full bloom here. By far the best sequence is the boat chapter, wherein the shipboard characters attempt dancing on a rocky boat and everyone succumbs to seasickness. The gags are amusing, especially when Charlie enrages a jealous man by paying too much attention to the man's wife. Another very funny gag has him trying to assemble a deck chair aboard ship. Naturally, he makes the most of all his comic moments.

The final sequence, called "Crossroads," deals with a traffic incident involving an irate traffic cop and some tar. Once again, Chaplin extracts every bit of humor out of a "stuck in traffic" situation.

Edna Purviance has little to do. It's virtually all Chaplin, since he wrote, produced and directed it.

It's up to the Chaplin standard for a comedy short.

"A Day's Pleasure" has a story and plot. In this one, Charlie Chaplin plays a family man, and they have a day of misadventures beginning with some trouble starting their automobile, then sea sickness on a cruise and, finally, they have difficulties passing a traffic crossing. The problem with the story and plot isn't that it's simple or episodic; the problem is that it's uncharacteristic of Chaplin. It would be a completely acceptable, perhaps even above average, two-reeler for any lesser comedian. Although everyone was a lesser comedian (at least in 1919), I mean those who didn't rise above these kinds of slapstick shorts.

Those like Laurel and Hardy would become masters of them, but films such as "A Day's Pleasure" were no longer the best Chaplin could do. He was already working on "The Kid", and it seems he wasn't very interested in shorter and simpler films anymore. First National demanded product, however, and so Chaplin rushed and forced out "A Day's Pleasure". And, it shows.

This is still pleasant to watch (it'd have been difficult to make this kind of picture unpleasant), and one may find plenty of laughs in it, but Chaplin was aiming, by now, for more than humor, and he could also be a lot funnier. His breakthrough, "The Kid", reflects that.

It's short and sweet, but Chaplin is in full swing here with his physical comedy and in projecting a screen presence that commands attention. The scenes on the boat on this "day out" are pretty funny, starting from when he boards in a hurry over a face down woman who has her arms stretched out to reach the boat and her toes gripping the dock. The dance with the boat rocking wildly, the guests in various stages of sea sickness, the boxing match Charlie has a guy much bigger than him (initially some blows to the guy's backside as he leans over the railing) ... it's all pretty silly, but highly entertaining. Not everything works and it feels a little fragmentary, but I liked it. I wish it had been fleshed out a little more.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

From his period after Mutual, 'A Day's Pleasure' is not one of his very best and not even among the best of this particular period. As said with many of his post-Keystone efforts, it shows a noticeable step up in quality though from his Keystone period, where he was still evolving and in the infancy of his long career. The Essanay and Mutual periods were something of Chaplin's adolescence period where his style had been found and starting to settle. After Mutual the style had properly settled and the cinematic genius emerged. Something that can be seen in 'A Day's Pleasure' though other efforts do it better.

The story is slight and a bit too busy and manic in places. It does get bogged down at times by padding and a few scenes that don't serve a lot of purpose. Not all the sequences work either.

It is agreed that the part with the rocking boat is far too exaggerated and doesn't look good or fit.

On the other hand, 'A Day's Pleasure' looks good, not amazing (though the opening shot for early Chaplin is remarkable) but it was obvious that Chaplin was taking more time with his work and not churning out countless shorts in the same year of very variable success like he did with Keystone. Appreciate the importance of his Keystone period and there is some good stuff he did there, but the more mature and careful quality seen here and later on is obvious.

'A Day's Pleasure' is very funny and charming, if not one of Chaplin's substance or pathos-filled. Its best moments are hilarious with some clever, entertaining, remarkably inventive and well-timed slapstick and the charm doesn't get over-sentimental. It generally moves quickly and there is little dullness in sight. The second half is both amusing and enchanting and the message isn't laid on too thick and has more potency than one would think.

Chaplin directs more than competently and the cinematic genius quality is emerging. He also, as usual, gives a playful and expressive performance and at clear ease with the physicality and substance of the role. The support is good and the chemistry charms.

Overall, good but not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Chaplin is married with a couple kids. They appear to be 10-12 years old or so. Once they get the car started, a major task, they head off to a pier where they will get on an excursion boat. The sign says, children in arms are free, so he carries these two kids onto the boat. From there on things don't go well. Thee is seasickness, fist fighting, and a misunderstanding husband. Upon there return, there is a hilarious series of events at an intersection. No Academy Award her, but non stop craziness.

Father (Charlie Chaplin) takes his family for a drive in their falling-apart Model T Ford, gets in trouble in traffic, and spends the day on an excursion boat.

A Day's Pleasure is almost universally regarded as Chaplin's least impressive First National film. Even contemporary critics were muted in their enthusiasm. The New York Times noted that "most of the time he depends for comedy upon seasickness, a Ford car, and biff-bang slap-stick, with which he is little, if any, funnier than many other screen comedians." Really, the only redeeming this about this film is that it introduces the world to Jackie Coogan. He is best remembered, of course, or being the kid" in Chaplin's "The Kid", but this film shows that the two were already working together before that... it is just that few people remember this one.

Only a couple of months after the release of "Sunnyside" Chaplin presented his another masterpiece - "A day's pleasure" which is only 17 minutes long but every second of it is pure entertainment. As with "One A. M." this movie is almost entirely one funny situation after another: a family of four is having a day off and they spend their time on the excursion ferry. Naturally because of the rocking everyone gets seasick and that's only the beginning; the scene where Charlie tried to assemble a chair was an absolute gem of comedy and I laughed so hard on this one and many other scenes.

The story doesn't bring anything new to the table because Charles was already full speed ahead in making his first feature length at the time and this movie was supposed to be just a filler to please First National to which he still owed a couple of movies but it wasn't just that. With every movie Chaplin always added something new and unseen before: a scene where a jazz player puts a slide of his trombone under Charlie's nose while playing was copied in many parody movies and another scene where Charlie gets stuck in tar and does the first "anti-gravity lean" could have easily influenced Michael Jackson to perform his own in the music video for "Smooth criminal" some 70 years later. That could be far-fetched but I'd like to think that Chaplin is the man to thank for so many things that we have now in the world in cinematography, obviously not without a reason.

Little Jackie Coogan was one of his on-screen sons in this feature and he went on to co-lead star in Charlie's next masterpiece...

One of Charlie Chaplin's early shorts casts him as the father of a family out for a trip and experiencing a series of mishaps. "A Day's Pleasure" is low-key compared to his most famous works, but manages to incorporate some funny stuff, namely the chair and the tar. To my knowledge, Chaplin's first movie that really focused on political issues was "The Kid", which addressed poverty head-on (although I don't know if "The Idle Class" got released first).

Anyway, enjoyable for its brief running time.

Charles Chaplin takes his wife and two kids for a day of fun. First their car has trouble starting. Then they spend the day on a rickety excursion boat. As he drives back, he has trouble driving across an intersection.

The story is simplistic and not that interesting. It's just one setup after another. He does some pretty funny bits like starting the car and stuck in the road. They're imaginative and fun. To me, this is just another piece of sausage turned out by the machinery. It's quick and dirty. It delivers a few laughs and a few interesting scenes. It's certainly not his best work.

This movie reminds me of the later Laurel and Hardy film A PERFECT DAY, though the Stan and Ollie film was an awful lot funnier. Part of this is that Chaplin's character is not exactly the "nice guy" he played in later movies and part of it was the choppiness of the film. It was a lot of little vignettes pieced together during a days' outing with the wife and kids. The delicate and artistic touch of his longer and later films just isn't there and, while okay, it's difficult to score this movie as anything other than average. In particular, the very poorly done sequence of the rocking boat was way overdone and and poorly assembled as well. The boat is simply rocking too wildly--most ship-wrecks rock much less. And, at the same time, the water in the background is way too calm. It just looked sloppy.

This is a good short comedy, and it has a bit of a different feel to it than most of Chaplin's shorts. Instead of his familiar tramp character or some other underdog, this time Charlie is a family man taking everyone out for a day of fun, along with some misadventures on the way there and back. There isn't much of Chaplin's usual social commentary, as it focuses instead on trying to get as much mileage as possible out of a few basic gags. Most of the time this works pretty well, although it bogs down a bit in the middle when a couple of the gags start to wear rather thin. Among other things, it's interesting in that the approach this time - the story line, and especially the milking each gag for all it is worth - is what you would expect from Laurel and Hardy, rather than from Chaplin. Overall, it's amusing and interesting, and worth a look.

Marital problems can stymie many artists' creative juices. And boy, did Charlie Chaplin have marital problems, so he was no exception. His marriage to Mildred was crumbling almost from the day he crossed the alter. With a false pregnancy, then a real pregnancy, then the death of his three-day-old baby, Chaplin felt his world closing in on him. Despite his mentally-draining personal problems, he created two short films in a span of a little over a year.

His eight-picture deal with First National signed in June 1917 had yet to be fulfilled. In fact, he had just finished two shorts for them right when he got married in September 1918. The company was hounding him to produce a movie, even a quickie to satisfy his obligation to the distributor as well as to his fans. He was to stitch together a series of vignettes with the theme of a family's day out in December 1919's "A Day's Pleasure."

After somewhat stumped on the framework for his latest film, Chaplin spotted young Jackie Coogan during a vaudeville show and was impressed by how he danced the shimmy. The comedian drew inspiration upon the young actor when he selected him for his upcoming movie, by now gestating as an idea of a family's adventures it experiences when going on a boating trip.

"A Day's Pleasure' is broken down into three parts: the family getting into a sputtering car, the cruise trip where everyone becomes queasy, and a return trip where a traffic cop is holding up Chaplin's car, causing a series of gaffs.

A brief taste of the genius of Charlie Chaplin. Not as complete as many of his movies, especially once you consider that he had already made movies like A Dog's Life before this, and that was nearly double the duration.

However, there is still enough time for Charlie Chaplin to display why is the greatest comedic actor of all time. He pretty much invented physical comedy for the silver screen, and also perfected it.

With the setting an central plot of this movie, there is little room for too much plot development, but Chaplin uses that to concentrate on particular scenes. His attempt to unfold a deckchair is one of the funniest things you'll ever see.

Charlie Chaplin plays a father who tries to have a nice day out with his family but he encounters one problem after another. First he can't get his Model T started, then misadventures on a boat, and finally traffic headaches on the way home. It's amusing enough but not one of Chaplin's best. It's probably one of the most generic shorts I've seen from him. There's the added bonus of seeing the locations, automobiles, clothing, etc. of the time. I really get a kick out of stuff like that in older films. Particularly silent ones before the Hollywood glamour machine really took over. It's a little slice of a time and place in history. Also, Jackie Coogan plays one of Chaplin's kids. This was his second film.

A DAY'S PLEASURE is a pleasure to see. It's not on the same level as Chaplin's A DOG'S LIFE or SHOULDER ARMS, but it might be a step above SUNNYSIDE. It really is funny. Chaplin plays a married man. First, he has a time trying to get his car started, then has a load of mishaps aboard a pleasure cruise ship. Finally, the traffic jam sequence is a laugh riot. The usual Chaplin players-Edna Purviance, Tom Wilson, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin, Loyal Underwood, even Jackie Coogan-are all as great as usual. A DAY'S PLEASURE is worth seeing if you're a Chaplin fan. For comedy lovers alone, it might not be as big a treat. Either way, it's funny.

Lazy weekend outings with a diminutive middle-class man and his family, who endure car troubles, a bumpy afternoon cruise and a late afternoon stand-off with the traffic officer. It's all extremely basic, half-effort stuff from a visibly uninspired Charlie Chaplin. Unhappy with his professional situation and depressed by his personal one, the auteur is a sad clown going through the motions here, with a critical lack of creative energy.

Of course, a bored genius can still negligently drop a few gems, and a passive Chaplin is still capable of better material than most. Case in point: a Greco-Roman title bout with an uncooperative piece of folding furniture. It goes on forever, but we never tire of it because the action is so effortlessly funny, still relatable after a hundred years. Pity the rest of the show doesn't flow as smoothly.

Does a sight gag and says "That's funny - I'll do it again". Then says "It's still funny - I'll do it again." Then says 'I think I can milk another laugh, so I'll do it again." So typical of Chaplin to needlessly repeat a joke over and over. However, I did laugh at the gag involving the manhole cover. At least he didn't repeat that one four or five times.

With a fun day ahead of them, a man, his wife and two young sons load up the car and prepare to head out. After some significant problems actually getting the car to go, they board the pleasure boat for an exhausting but fun voyage. And f course what fun family outing would be complete without traffic chaos to close it out? I've not actually watched that many Charlie Chaplin films you know. I can think of a handful off the top of my head that I saw a year or so ago but other than that not really and certainly I'm remiss in seeing some of his classic films. Fortunately an arts channel recently gave me a full afternoon to catch up, showing several classic film as well as some shorts – one of which was this. A Day's Pleasure takes a couple of situations to make for a family outing and produces some genuinely funny moments out of them. Sad to say that the film is not funnier but when I wasn't actually laughing (which was the majority) it was still amusing.

This is almost entirely down to Chaplin himself, who did everything but make the tea in this film according to the credits. Physically he has great comic movement and just the sight of him coming down the steps at the start warmed me. Not all the routines are that funny but all of them are well delivered by him, while the supporting cast of Wilson, Bergman and others all do well. The end result is an amusing short film that is consistently amusing with a few good laughs. Modern viewers not interested to begin with won't be won over but regardless it is amusing and has stood up well in terms of entertainment value.

More like a day with the family, it appears that The Tramp is married with children. Here, he spends the day with the family as he drives them to and from the boat ride. While the movie deals with situation after situation that the 'Tramp's' get themselves involved in, the majority of the movie takes place on the boat ride. It is here where Chaplin uses some early fantasy camera work to make the boat ride less enjoyable than it really is. Back and forth Chaplin sways the camera from left to right, making the boat look like it is being rocked back and forth by the ocean waves. A nice little comedy with a minor blooper in the background. In the start of the movie when Chaplin is trying to start the car, if you look behind in the open street you will see a man walking down the sidewalk toward the car. He stops half way when he sees that there is a camera and that they are shooting a movie. He quickly stops and turns around to walk out of the shot. Before he does, he stops again and looks back to get one final look. He then hurries off to get out of the shot.