Our Hospitality

Director: Buster Keaton and Jack Blystone
Year Released: 1923
Rating: 3.0

Buster returns home to the South to claim his father's property when he discovers an old feud between his family (the McKays) and a neighboring family (the Canfields) is very much still going on, and that the neighboring family wants to kill him. Call me a heretic, but in many cases I prefer the insane energy of Keaton's shorts and medium-length pictures to his comparatively more 'measured' features - in this case, like The Navigator, that craziness doesn't really come alive until the last third; there are still your usual subtle gags in the first two acts, and a curious locomotive that rides an elevated track. Still enjoyable as a (very) light comedy; the moral seems to be that the best way to settle a long-standing Battle Between Families is to save the pretty daughter from the opposing clan's life (by keeping her from falling down a waterfall) and then marrying her.