DbcultAccessing Vault...
5.9/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.9/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Passionate Plumber remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are a massive Buster Keaton completist, you’ll watch it regardless. If you want to see a silent film legend struggle to navigate the clunky dialogue of the early 1930s, this is for you. People who hate stagey, talky comedies from the Great Depression era should probably just skip this and watch Way Out West instead.
The whole premise is thin as paper. A socialite wants to make her boyfriend jealous, so she picks a plumber—Keaton—to act like he’s this sophisticated romantic rival. You can practically hear the writers stretching the setup to make it last seventy minutes.
There’s a real weirdness to seeing Keaton talk. His voice is fine, but you keep waiting for him to do something incredible with his body, and he mostly just stands there being awkward. It’s like watching a racecar driver being told to drive a golf cart.
The scene where he’s trying to navigate a fancy dinner party is painful. Not 'funny-painful,' just 'oh no, please stop' painful. Jimmy Durante is there too, and honestly, he’s doing a lot more heavy lifting than the script deserves. He’s loud and chaotic, which acts as a weird buffer against how subdued Keaton feels here.
I noticed a bit where a prop vase sits on a mantle for twenty minutes and never gets knocked over. You just *know* that in a better movie, someone would have bumped into it. It’s like the film is allergic to its own slapstick potential.
It’s not as bad as some people say, but it’s definitely not good. It feels like a movie made by people who were scared of silence but didn’t quite know how to fill it up with anything interesting. Watching this makes me miss the pure, visual rhythm of The Barefoot Boy or even the strange charm of Freckles.
There is a moment near the end where Buster finally gets to move a bit, and for like ten seconds, the movie actually wakes up. Then the dialogue kicks back in and ruins the mood. 🙄 It’s a shame, really.
