Ignorant of the generational feud that led to his father’s death, a posh city type returns to his ancestral home to claim an inheritance. Buster Keaton as the last McCoy in a land of Hatfields, in other words. On his voyage, he's seated in the same train car as a lovely lass from the rival crew. Matters grow complicated when the two develop a flicker of romance, amidst all the bumps and jostles, and reach a boil when he’s cordially invited for dinner. The rules of hospitality, you see, insist his enemies do no harm so long as he’s a guest in their house. _Our Hospitality_ was released during a critical period for cinematic comedy, as the simple, silent two-reelers of the previous decade were massaged and expanded to fill a larger spot on the bill. Charlie Chaplin toyed with longer subjects in _The Kid_ two years prior, but then reverted to looser, shorter ideas until _The Gold Rush_ in 1925. Harold Lloyd’s first full-length comedy, _Safety Last_, narrowly beat this one to the screen. Keaton himself cracked the hour mark only a month prior, with _Three Ages_, but that was actually a case of three shorts in one, as hinted by the title. In that sense, _Our Hospitality_ is his first real effort to merge his familiar skit-based humor into the broader framework of a dramatic story. It works in some places, less in others. We can tell when he’s really feeling a scene, like the riotous roller coaster train ride that goes on and on, or when he’s merely going through the motions to connect dots. It should go without saying that Keaton’s physical mannerisms carry the day. He’s a spark plug throughout; tumbling from carriages, sprinting from would-be assassins, dangling from sheer cliffs. His bravado really makes the climax mean something, capped by a thrilling Tarzan swing under the lip of a steep waterfall. I could almost feel the bottom drop out of my stomach on that one. It can boast some really funny bits, but for all their circumstance, most of the plot pieces ultimately boil down to the same old tricks. We’ll race through about five minutes of story, then settle down to watch Buster toy with the new setting. Rinse and repeat. It represents growing pains for the comedian, and for the genre at large. They’d put it all together eventually.

A hundred years later, and Keaton still makes me laugh so hard I woke up my wife. Really well done throughout, with the standout sequence coming at the end. How they conceived of and executed the waterfall stunt is truly stunning.

Was Buster Keaton crazy? In this movie we can see a lot of his acrobatic skills, with good action scenes. The story is ok, it's not exactly my kind of humor, but this is still a good movie.