Best movie of this year hands down!

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

"Easy Street" is a 24-minute short movie from 1917. So it soon has its 100th birthday. 1917 was a time in Charlie's career when not only Edna Purviance was a regular in his movies playing the love interest usually, but also Eric Campbell was usually in these playing the main antagonist to Chaplin's character. And not only the difference in size makes Chaplin and Campbell such a successful duo, it's also the way they elevate the other's material. This film here may be the best example. Chaplin is so much better when he is not just a one-man show, but actually gives some screen time to other characters as well, because they are needed to make it a better story. Of course, Chaplin was the biggest movie star at that point, but you can't have a great story with one person bringing slapstick comedy from start to finish and sadly this is what Chaplin did in many of his films. However, this one is not among them and yet it is lots of fun to watch Chaplin as a police officer. One of his best and this one was made near the end of Chaplin's short film career. recommended.

Entertaining, but not among Chaplin's best.Interesting plot: the Tramp becomes a policeman! (It could happen...). From here many adventures ensue.Has the usual Chaplin slapstick and sight gags but also has some darker themes: bullying, abuse of power, power-madness, instant fame and even drug abuse (though here it appears more of an advert for drugs - it was 1917 I guess, so they didn't know better).However, it is not as powerful, clever or laugh-a-minute as Chaplin's later stuff. Chaplin's gags seem less well thought-out and more about cheap laughs here. I guess he was still honing his craft and exploring his own boundaries.Good performances. Eric Campbell is scary as the bully, he of the fearsome eyebrows.

Charlie Chaplin as a police officer - if ever there was an inherently contradictory twist of character in cinematic history, there was one. How could Chaplin, who so frequently took a stand against the tyranny and ineffectiveness of authority figures ever cast his sweetly bumbling Tramp character in the role of one of the most present and disliked authority figures of the film's time with anything less than hilariously twisted results? It was certainly enough of a hook to guarantee promise for Easy Street, one of the many two-reeler films Chaplin created for the Mutual Film Company, but, ever the innovator, Chaplin refused to let the film coast by on its comedic concept, and instead infused enough socially conscious undertones to his film to make it a remarkably compelling and complex piece of work as well as being enormously funny. Despite the deceptively simplistic storyline, Chaplin manages to work an astonishing amount of subject matter and thematic content into a mere 22 minutes which could have been taken up by a simple serious of extended gags. While the wild fight scenes (astonishingly choreographed even by contemporary standards and alarmingly vicious for their time) and silly slapstick and sight gags suggest a typically flippant throwaway comedy (and Easy Street easily excels as such), the film lurking beneath the jovial exteriors is one of stark, devastating realism. The ironically named Easy Street proves a desolate, broken down block serving as a microcosm for the state of societal poverty, and Chaplin's depiction hardly shirks around the more unsettling elements, cheery comedy or not. From the rampant, incessant violence to the shockingly graphic depiction of drug abuse (squeezed by a more lenient age of censorship), both played mainly for laughs but with substantially dark undertones, the film paints a surprisingly despairing portrait only by its images and miraculously without ever jeopardising the comedy of the overall work. By casting his now firmly established Tramp character (here called 'A Derelict') as an unwitting policeman, Chaplin mocks authority in the spirit of his previous benefactor Mack Sennett and his infamously blundering "Keystone Cops". However, Chaplin proves more underhandedly sympathetic, suggesting the genuine plight of an organization of law enforcement so desperate that it would take the Tramp's unassuming good will and accidental good fortune to become the soul voice of reason and ultimately save the day. However, most poignantly, even when the film's primary antagonist has been defeated, the conflict is not resolved, as all of the townspeople the Tramp has saved turn on him. Despite the film's more standard sentimental ending (potentially ironically so) such dark allusions suggest that the conflict is never-ending, and brief moments of hope are only fleeting - such complexity melded into a potentially paper thin project mark Chaplin for the cinematic genius he was quickly on the way to developing into.It goes without saying that Chaplin's effortless performance as his timeless Tramp figure is easily the comedic highlight and heart of the show, capturing the audience's hearts from the first sight of him asleep huddled in a corner to every mirthful bodily twitch to wildly hilarious contortion. But Chaplin's exceptional work is not the sole performance worth noting, as his frequent co-star Edna Purviance proves as luminous and winsome as ever as a religious mission worker who captures the Tramp's heart, and character actor Eric Campbell is a truly foreboding presence despite his far over-exaggerated eyebrows as the near indestructible "bully" tearing a violent streak through the suffering town. The striking social critique lying beneath the irreverent surfaces easily make Easy Street one of Chaplin's most satisfying as well as inventively hysterical early efforts. Seldom is such humour, pathos and complexity melded so effortlessly into one concise 22 minute package, making Easy Street a perfect candidate for those looking to discover or cherish more of the timelessly endearing spirit of Chaplin.-9/10

Deservedly, many consider "Easy Street" one of Chaplin's best short films. Chaplin was in his last year at Mutual and was in top form; "Easy Street" is also considerably different from his other Mutual pictures. Social commentary and the like often appear in much of his work, but here, for the first time, satire underlines this commentary throughout the picture. Thus, depictions of poverty, lawlessness, street and marital violence and drug use mingle comfortably with the usual uproarious comedy--and by this time, matured slapstick and pantomime--one expects from Charlie.In addition to that, Chaplin manages to balance and blend the different styles characteristic of comedy and social commentary. There's the makeup typical of slapstick for Eric Campbell, the impoverished look of other characters and the realistic look for those like Edna Purviance's character. I think the police outfits resembling those of the Keystone Kops, like the one Chaplin dons, are a particularly nice throwback to the Keystone tradition Chaplin began from but had since surpassed.The settings for Easy Street and the surrounding (within the photoplay) area also reflect these dual styles. It certainly looks like a slum, but at the same time, the sets are recognizably artificial--obviously movie studio sets. Furthermore, the props, such as the lamppost, sometimes take on a cartoonish effect. And, for all the harsh violence occurring on it, Easy Street is full with soft contours. Yet, it works well. It would have been great if it expanded spatially to free it and the film from a flat, theatrical position, but such is to be expected from a 1917 production, and to the credit of Chaplin and usual cinematographer Roland Totheroh, they do vary the shots somewhat. The sets are impressive otherwise in creating a confined, dualistic atmosphere.Additionally, Chaplin hadn't been so much the hero of a story since "The Vagabond". "Easy Street" features the most successful variation on Chaplin and Eric Campbell's David and Goliath. Campbell is meaner than ever, and they act out two ingenious, comical set pieces for the tramp-turned-policeman to slay him. The concurrent solutions of force and regeneration are also seamless in concluding this impressively matured and substantive Chaplin short.