Must See Movie...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This was made by Cecil Hepworth in the same year that he produced Rescued by Rover, and it seems incredible that the same filmmaker could make films of such varying quality in the space of one year. The entire film is basically working up towards a punchline which is as unfunny and uninteresting as the build-up before it. A courting couple on a picnic are prevented from enjoying a romantic liaison by their matronly chaperone, so when she falls asleep they sneak behind a hedge, leaving their hats visible at opposite ends of it so that, when she wakes up, the chaperone believes they are sitting far apart (as, undoubtedly, you would in her position). This one's pretty disappointing, it has to be said.

Of all the early film producers, those of Hepworth are generally among the better films to watch in the 21st century. Unlike MOST of the films of Edison and Lumiere, their films often had cute stories or a good sense of humor. It was in this light that I saw this film and saw it as a complete waste of time. Three people are having a picnic and NOTHING of any interest occurs. Absolutely freaking nothing! This is not too atypical of some of the early films, but Hepworth must have been caught napping or just scraped up some old deleted scenes to produce this. This film is SO DULL that it's not even of much interest to film historians. Find another early film--they're not all this pointless.

This one doesn't work very well, even considering its era. The whole film is only there to set up one gag, but it's not even a very good gag, and it's not carried out very well either. You always want to be charitable in evaluating these earliest films, because they did not usually have a lot to work with, and because almost everything they did was new at the time. But "The Other Side of the Hedge" comes across as routine and rather sloppy even by the standards of the era. Most other Hepworth-produced films had much more energy and creativity than this one does.

Made around the same time as the excellent 'Rescued by Rover' this is a lame example of the one joke fodor that was being mass produced at the time. Little time or thought went into either the setting up, or the execution of the punchline and the film as a whole has little of interest to the student of film.