Absolutely the worst movie.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This may be the short film from Charlie Chaplin, in which he plays the most tragic character of his career. At work, he's hungry and needs to steal his co-worker's lunch. He's married to a considerably older, not even remotely attractive gold-digger wife, who's a pest to poor old Charlie. And finally, when he receives the paycheck, which is as low always, and tries to hide it, the wife takes it away immediately. No surprise the little man goes to the bar at night to drink away his sorrows. When he decides to get home, all the trains are packed and Charlie repeatedly attempts to hop on one, but here he comes as short as everywhere else. So after a long walk through the rain, he finally reaches the dragon's cave and as the alarm clock rings, the dragon makes sure in resolute fashion that Charlie (without food and sleep) gets to work early in the morning again.I feel most Chaplin short films haven't aged too well, but this one is an exception, mainly thanks to Phyllis Allen, whose characters interactions with Chaplin are a joy to watch. The scenes with the two are easily the highlight, i.e. the return from work and the scenes right at the end. She's truly sinister and I wouldn't have minded if she had starred in a couple more Chaplin films. The construction work scenes early on were okay. The pub scenes were the weakest part of the film, although the butcher wagon was kinda funny. I believe this is one of the better Chaplin short films and a good start to get in the legendary silent actor's body of work.

Chaplin's tramp has a job in this half hour short which comically depicts the plight of the era's laborer that has changed negligibly since. There is little plot to go around but plenty of perfected sight gags by the Silent master as he works and drinks with co-workers and fends off his shrewish rolling pin wielding wife who is intent on collecting his entire pay. The most deft comedy bits are on the job as he does amazing things with a lift as well as a scene grabbing bricks being tossed to him (albeit achieved by reversing the negative). The drinking with co-workers keeps the laughs going and continue through the final confrontation with the wife as Chaplin's uproarious balletic grace remains in fine form from start to finish.

"Pay Day" was Charlie Chaplin's last short film, and a funny one at that. He plays a bricklayer who comes to work late one day and proceeds to work inefficiently, incurring the wrath of his monstrous foreman (Mack Swain). After the foreman underpays the bricklayer, he incorrectly adds up his overtime, and the foreman believes that he has been overpaid.So, the bricklayer and his friends go to a bar and get drunk. After the bricklayer misses every streetcar, he arrives home at 5 am, finding that his wife is not one bit happy about it.As always, Chaplin knew how to make a great movie.

Pay Day is definitely one of the best of all of Charlie Chaplin's early short comedies, and that's not even just because it is now placed at the end of The Gold Rush, Chaplin's own favorite of his films. Charlie plays a construction worker who shows up to work late to a job at which his boss is clearly a tyrant. The part where Charlie is in the ditch strenuously digging and only coming up with tiny bits of dirt is one of the funniest parts of the entire film. And then, of course, you have the classic brick throwing scene, which was sure to have knocked people off of their seats when they first saw it in 1922. But Pay Day is not just another slapstick comedy, it's also got one of the better stories of Chaplin's early, short films. His misadventures at work set up the scene for his underpayment (which seemed not to be enough pay because Charlie was uneducated and added wrong – 2+2+2+2=9), and his eventual confrontations with his beast of a wife. When she takes nearly all of his paycheck, he sneaks away to a bar to get drunk, finally making it home at 5am, only to find his horrendous wife sleeping with a rolling pin. It is another classic moment when he sneaks into the bathroom (hoping to have convinced his wife that he has already left for work) and goes to jump into the bathtub full of laundry, only to find that it is also full of water.While Pay Day does present a steady stream of slapstick comedy (which was, of course, one of Chaplin's greatest skills), it is also a fairly involved story, which few of his short films had, but which were almost always very well done. He again presents the predicament of the working man, both in his work environment as well as an amusing comment on the working man's home life. If you are interested in Chaplin's work or in slapstick comedy in general, Pay Day is a must see.