"Go West" (1925)

Buster Keaton is often praised for being the Great Stone Face. True enough Keaton's dead pan expression at all the increasingly crazy antics in Go West is one of its most notable aspects. The humor stems from the disconnect between Keaton and the slapstick he performs with dutiful commitment. But it also comes from Keaton playing characters that are totally serious and dedicated. Keaton isn't emotionless; he's a Charlie Brown-esque figure sighing a wearing, aware sigh at the lot life has dealt him. This makes it much easier to accept the plot of Go West, which is essentially about Keaton (credited as "Friendless") befriending a cow, Brown Eyes. Sure it's a silly plot but it's not one Keaton entirely wants us to take seriously. Keaton's character takes it so damn seriously that we're meant to rightfully laugh in the face of the absurdity of it. Keaton spends the back-half of the film trying to save the cow from going to the slaughterhouse while getting the rest of the herd to their destination -- the second task he takes upon himself because he's simply too darn earnest not to help out his boss. The train the cattle is on gets put off course by a group of bandits and Keaton is forced to take an alternative route. In the film's most memorable sequence, he lets loose the hundreds of cattle upon an unsuspecting city where they upset traffic and at one point make good on the expression "bull in a china-shop". Then the film's best moment is its final joke; "I want her," says Keaton pointing, presumably to the boss's daughter. Nope, to the cow. It should be cheesy but the expression on Keaton's face sells the moment home. He means it and because he believes it so do we, and thus we can't help but laugh.

Grade: A-