Day Dreams

Hard luck Buster Keaton tries to win over a prospective father-in-law by proving his earning potential. He'll make bank to show he can support a family or he'll borrow the family revolver and bid the world adieu. Just another example of Keaton's pitch black sense of humor! _Day Dreams_ is, at its core, just a loose collection of extra-short clips that don't waste a second before getting to the good stuff. Swapping jobs by the hour, Buster meets disaster in every field, finding excuses to pratfall and make a mess in his temporary gigs as a veterinary assistant, street cleaner, stage extra and more. The slimmer format seems to liberate Keaton, who effortlessly produces a string of playful, ingenious physical gags in each setting, just like the old days. I think the stress of constructing a cohesive, longer shared narrative may have hamstrung his creativity in the past few pictures; it's been a little while since he's felt this carefree. The film's best laugh is a neverending hamster wheel tumble through the spinning paddle of a riverboat, a comic device so potent he'd revisit and expand upon it several years later in his 1928 feature _Steamboat Bill Jr._