As a wedding present, Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely get a prefabricated
house which they intend to set up in the one week of their honeymoon - but
a rejected suitor has moved the numbers on the boxes around, which adds to
quite some confusion and leaves them with a house that dompletely doesn't
look like intended, including doors that go to nowhere, an out-of shape
facade and the like. Still, that leaves Buster undaunted, and he has his
housewarming party as planned - during which the house is turned into a
merry-go-round by a whirlwind. And just when Buster and Sybil inspect
their house for damages, they learn they have built it on the wrong lot,
their lot is just opposite the traintracks. Still, Buster refuses to give
up, and thus puts the house on barrels (for wheels) and tries to pull it
to the right lot by car - but then the house gets stuck on the traintracks
and is crashed by a train ... Buster Keaton's first short over
which he had full control already shows him on top of his game: An amazing
number of stunts and sightgags seem to virtually chase each other while
Buster never loses sight of his main narrative. The fact that no
miniatures or back projections were used even for the most exciting scenes
of the film (like the whirlwind and the train crashing through the house)
only adds to the high quality of the film, as does the light-footed
approach to its sometimes hair-raisingly dangerous stunts. Quite
possibly one of Keaton's best-ever shorts and totally recommended.
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