Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.
Made when he had actually left Mutual in a period where the style that was starting to evolve with Essanay was found and setting one up for his prime, 'Triple Trouble' instead feels like a misfire from Keystone. Which is not a good position to be in when Chaplin had come on such a long way since then by this point. It is a patchwork of three of his previous films made and released during inferior (so fledgling and adolescence) periods and does it very cheaply. Have just read that Chaplin didn't authorise the making of 'Triple Trouble' and that is hardly surprising as there is a reeking of studio interference feel here. He had really matured by this point and it was not something that he would do to his films.
Chaplin himself is fine, Edna Purviance is charming, Billy Armstrong amuses and the chemistry works. Can't fault the performances here.
There are parts that raise a smile and the film doesn't look too bad in photography and settings.
However, the storytelling is disjointed and confused, close to incoherent even (something that rarely is used for criticising the not so good efforts from Chaplin, this is the first work actually of his when reviewing them where incoherence has been used as a criticism). The patchwork approach to it makes everything choppy and the scenes included from previous work are like scrappy fragments with less than flowing editing and little relevance to each other. There is definitely a more-than-one short film in one feel here with the utilisation of those three and that is essentially what 'Triple Trouble' is. And it certainly does not feel like a short film but more an unnecessary "cheater". The hodgepodge of additional scenes fares even worse.
Furthermore, it made it difficult to appreciate or be amused by the humour, none of the content being close to Chaplin's best work, even when they were from efforts released not long before the material already feels old, and vastly inferior even to everything he did at Mutual. Plus even though his Keystone period was very variable, none of the work during that period had the problem of being unnecessary. A lot of the content reeks of incompleteness where gags were not cooked all the way through or finished properly, and everything feels old and tired. Even the continuity is a mess.
Overall, a big misfire but not one that can be put at Chaplin's door when he had nothing to do with it. 4/10 Bethany Cox
