Summary
In this frantic relic of early slapstick, Eddie Barry portrays a patriarch whose domestic life is a sprawling vortex of eight dependents and a tax-reporting zeal that borders on the hallucinatory. The narrative ignites when Eddie, blinded by the siren call of early 20th-century motorization, thrusts sixty dollars upon a bewildered grease monkey, erroneously identifying him as a car salesman. This impulsive acquisition of a 'flivver'—a rickety chariot of dubious provenance—propels the family through a series of kinetic catastrophes. What begins as a suburban odyssey through backyards and over manicured lawns devolves into a desperate flight from the constabulary, who perceive Eddie as a common thief. The film’s climax serves as a poignant, if accidental, metaphor for the fragility of the American dream: the family’s newly minted status symbol is swallowed whole by a pit of quicksand. Left with nothing but their lives and a walk back to the domestic sphere, the resolution offers a cynical yet heartwarming reprieve from the relentless velocity of the chase.
Synopsis
Eddie is the head of a family who claims eight dependents, a wife and seven children when reporting his income tax. In papa's enthusiasm about purchasing an automobile, he forces sixty dollars on a mechanic engaged in "fixing" one, whom papa mistakes for the owner. Before the dumbfounded "fixer" can protest or explain, papa drives the flivver through somebody's back yard, en route for his home. The children are delighted and while their mother prepares for the first country drive, they nearly wreck the "lizzie." Finally, all are safely in and a drive in the country begins. So does the trouble. Meantime, a tribe of policemen pursue what they believe to be a thief. Their pursuit is interrupted repeatedly by laughable and gymnastic accidents. Eventually, papa comes to a closed bridge, decides to drive through the stream, but the bottom is quicksand. It is then a case of "women and children first" and with no help available, the family sees the newly acquired luxury sink out of sight. Every cloud has its silver lining, so when the police arrive, there being no evidence against the fugitive, he is allowed to go in peace, walking the family home - with mother.
Review Excerpt
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The silent era was often defined by its obsession with the collision between human fallibility and the burgeoning industrial machine. In Family Troubles, this friction is not merely a plot device but the very heartbeat of a narrative that pulses with a frantic, almost desperate energy. Eddie Barry, an actor whose physicality often bridged the gap between the grotesque and the everyman, anchors a story that begins in the mundane world of tax reporting and ends in the literal muck of a quicksan..."
