One Week (1920)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Buster Keaton's first independent work is simple, sweet, and very funny. Buster and his bride Sybil Seely try to assemble a house from a kit, not realizing Keaton's rival has switched the boxes around. What results from the slip up is a monstrous mess of a house Salvidor Dali himself might have wished he'd dreamed up. The climax is exhilarating, and the ending is one of Keaton's most memorable.I'd like to applaud Sybil Seely, who was Keaton's finest leading lady. Not merely a pretty face to be fought over, Seely radiates charm and sweetness, and her bubbly nature is a fun contrast with Keaton's stoic character. It's a shame they only appeared together a handful of times before Seely retired at age twenty to become a full-time parent.

Man, this 19-minute Buster Keaton short is almost too exhausting to watch as one crazy scene after another is shown. This is a wild and always-entertaining short, considered one of Buster's best. It's total lunacy.Newlywed Buster and his bride (the pretty Sybil Sealey) get a "portable house" as a wedding present. When they get to the site, they find out they have to build the house themselves.A poor loser who lost the girl, "Handy Hank," sabotages the house-building process by fouling up the numbered directions. When finished, the house is a little strange, to say the least! One look and you are guaranteed to laugh out loud. Anyway, there's work to be done decorating and adding a few more little things like th chimney or trying to fit a piano through a front window.A calendar is shown throughout the movie and we see the daily "progress." Obstacles are many but the couple persists and kisses their way through all the problems. Most of the film turns out to be sight gags and slapstick, especially when they have their "housewarming" at the end of the week and a big windstorm literally turns the house into a "merry-go-round."If that isn't enough, you should see the ending when the train.......

This film was remade with sound and with different actors in the early 1930s and was entitled A PUT UP JOB--though the results weren't quite as wonderful as this thoroughly enjoyable Keaton short. Oddly, the remake is NOT listed on IMDb, but I just recently saw it on a DVD called "The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1929 - 1933 - Cavalcade of Comedy (1929) ". The Keaton film is jam-packed with great stunts, cute scenes and the most amazing set you'll ever see! Buster and his girl get married. They are given a plot of land and a house kit as a wedding present. However, the man who wanted to marry Buster's sweetie is mad and wants revenge. So, he changes the numbers on the directions and Buster puts up the house anyway--even though it looks like an absolute joke, he doesn't seem to notice. You really have to see the house--especially when a storm hits--it's a very funny and incredible scene. Later, it turns out they built the house on the wrong lot--leading to yet another even more spectacular scene. Rarely in a short do you see so much money spent on sets and setting up wonderful jokes. A sweet and hilarious film.

Keaton was now out on his own, no longer working with Fatty Arbuckel. 'One Week'was his first independent film. Joseph Schneck produced the film, having done work on the Fatty and Keaton shorts. The team of Buster Keaton and Eddi Cline directed and did script work as would follow in most of Keaton's other shorts. 'One Week' is definitive of Buster Keaton's style. It is purely gag over narrative. Keaton's performance is more important than the story, and that was pretty much how all his later movies worked. Keaton also enjoyed capturing the world around him as it happened. His stunts in this movie did not rely on editing. The house really did turn, the train sequence was real. This was a good beginning to what followed.