Back in October 2025, I went to a screening of Nosferatu that had music from Radiohead playing over it. I was intrigued to see whether it worked and barring a couple of minor issues (one with the cinema itself), back then I knew there was this screening coming and so I waited because this time it wasn't a horror film but a Buster Keaton film. There was a mystery before I even got there because on the website it said that the running time was an hour and 15 minutes and yet Sherlock Jr. is only 45 minutes. As you are reading this review then you know that there was another film before Sherlock Jr.
No intro like with Nosferatu. I didn’t mind that too much as I thought that they didn’t really add anything. Not being an R.E.M. fan I don't know if their music was used on this one but it would make sense if they did. The first couple of minutes were distracting as the image would go ‘funny’ when certain beats were hit in the song.
Bearing in mind its only 22 minutes, Buster Keaton manages to get through quite a lot. First he goes on a water ride to try and meet a girl and by the end of the ride he gets a black eye so clearly whatever chatup line (or what passed for a chat up like in 1923) didn’t work. Next up he is walking past a hot air ballon and gets asked to attach something to it, the balloon then ends up flying into the air prematurely and he is on top of it oblivious. The final part sees him trying his hand at fishing and this was the best part of the movie as he ends up walking unaware that a bear is following him and until the bear gets shot, it looks like it's a real bear which is definitely a brave thing to do. When the bear is shot it does seem to turn into a bloke in a costume but there was obviously no way of making a bear co-operate.
More happens in this 22 minute film that sometimes happens in a $200 million action film. I enjoyed this and it shows in my mind why Buster Keaton is better than Charlie Chaplin. I think he is a better actor and he manages to show more emotion than Chaplin. I get that Chaplin is more of a comedy performer but in this era I would have definitely been more of a Keaton fan. I thought that the run time was the perfect length and didn’t need to be any longer.
On the song front I thought that they were used better than they were in Nosferatu. Despite being a bit distracting at first they helped after a while and there wasnt the issue of awkward silences like in Nosferatu.I had seen this before and think that the music originally used worked better but as a fun experiment, this version did what it needed to do. Now onto the main event and what the four people in my screening were there for……Sherlock Jr.
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