THE BETTER 'OLE
starring Sydney Chaplin
PHOTOPLAY
December, 1926
Brother Charlie used to make pictures like this before he got
all tangled up in Art. However, we come, not to bury Charlie,
but to praise Syd. In this film, Syd picks up the characters of
the popular Bairnsfather cartoons, weaves new adventures around
Bill and Alf and makes a picture which is to comedy what "The
Big Parade" is to drama.
There is one gag that places Syd right up with the Immortals.
Bill andAlf, playing front and hind legs of a horse, respectively,
are left in a French town that is captured by the Germans. The
gorgeous adventures of that horse will always be stored in our
mind as one of our Beautiful Memories of the Eighth Art. Chuck
Reisner, the director, must be credited with an assist. Take the
children or they will run away and go by themselves.
THE BETTER 'OLE
Starring Sydney Chaplin
PICTURE PLAY
January, 1927
If you think Sydney Chaplin was at his best as a female impersonator in "Charley's Aunt" and it s successors, by all means see him in "The Better 'Ole" and get the shock of your life. Also, I may add, the laugh of your life. For he comes across with such glorious humor in this picturization of the war comedy that one is inclined to dare all other comedians to equal him. Certainly Syd surpasses his own record, and one trembles for fear his later pictures may not live up to his present one. Incidentally, this is one of the rare instances when a film is better than the play from which it was taken.
Ask me for the plot of "The Better 'Ole" and you find me dumb. The story is slight indeed, yet it is there; and so packed with incident that it reflects great credit upon the skill of everyone concerned in it. Syd is Private William Busby who has served thirty years in the British army, and is known as Old Bill, from which you will gather that he does not take the war too seriously. Accidentally, he frustrates a spy within his own regiment and ultimately checks the advance of the Germans. Offered by his general anything in the world, Old Bill modestly requests a sergeantry, and remarks to his buddy, Alf, "Bli' me, this ain't a bad war after all."
There is neither love nor heroines in "The Better 'Ole." Instead we have humanness and wholesome laughter. Don't pass this up; it's great.
Video source: Turner