It's a Gift

There are some pretty good gags in this Snub Pollard short comedy, and the first part is quite entertaining. After a while, it really runs out of ideas, and it gets to be just a little repetitive. Pollard himself is lively enough to keep it going most of the time, but it's fortunate that they did not try to draw it out any further than they did.

The story has Pollard as an inventor whose newest product is eagerly sought after by the oil industry. The best part of the film is towards the beginning, with the sequence of Pollard in his own gadget-filled home. There is a good variety of gags that would not have been out of place in a Buster Keaton movie, and indeed much of it recalls Keaton features such as "The Scarecrow".

The car gag is quite good at first, although eventually they simply tried to get too much out of it, and at that point the movie starts to lose some momentum. It's still a clever and amusing one-reeler, above average overall, and certainly worth seeing.