Any way, that's after meeting him, some 20 years after last seeing him as a baby. This comedy with dramatic pathos deals with the feud between two rival riverboat ship owners: old school Ernest Torrance and his seemingly barely floatable tug, and rich Tom McGuire and his expensive river cruise boat. When Torrance's milquetoast son, Keaton, arrives, it's at laugh expenses on him, but McGuire doesn't expect the fact that his own daughter (Marion Byron) to already know him and fall in love with him. McGuire arranges for Torrance's boat to be condemned, and later for Torrance to be arrested. Several other natural disasters occur, including the most dramatic of windstorms, resulting among some of Keaton's very best effects. This works out as comedy, mainly because of the "uh oh!" factor that occurs, as well as some brilliant special effects. Keaton seems constantly in danger as he strives to save both his father's steamship and Byron, later trying to rescue Torrance from a certain watery grave. The story really is more dramatic than comedic, using what sounds like "Show Boat's" "Cotton Blossom" as its main theme. Keaton proves that a seemingly useless milquetoast can become a hero, giving one of his best film appearances. Many elements of this 90 year plus old film are far ahead of their time, making thus a must for film students and lovers of fine cinematic genius in general.

The setting is the town of River Junction sometime during the mid 1800s. The town is welcoming a new steamship, "The King" a virtual floating palace owned by town magnate J.J. King (Tom McGuire). William Canfield aka Steamboat Bill(Ernest Torrence) owns the rundown steamer Stonewall Jackson and faces ruin.Canfield receives a telegram from his long lost son Junior (Buster Keaton) which raises his hopes. Expecting a robust take action son, he instead gets a puny Ivy League college boy complete with ukulele and pencil mustache. Canfield decides to try and make a man out of Junior. Of course J.J. King has a comely young daughter, Kitty (Marion Bryan) who has taken a liking to the hapless Junior. Canfield and King get into a fight and Canfield is arrested. Junior vows to help him escape, but the a fierce storm comes up and all hell breaks loose and.......................The first two thirds of the film move slowly. The arrival of Junior, his father's attempts to make a man of him and the conflict between the two ship owners kind of drags in spots. The whole storm sequence though, is some of the best work ever done by Keaton. It's loaded with several hilarious sight gags, pratfalls and stunts including the famous one where the side of a house falls on Buster with him left unhurt and standing where a window should have been."Steamboat Bill Jr." was Buster Keaton's last film under his arrangement with producer Joseph P. Schenck who gave him full rein to make his pictures. Following this, Keaton's pictures were produced, directed and controlled by MGM. The quality of the films suffered and Keaton was reduced to playing the stooge for Jimmy Durante in an ill fated series in the early thirties. He never made a meaningful film after "Steamboat Bill Jr.".There was one little inside joke where Junior is trying on several hats and the clerk slips him Buster's trademark pork pie hat which "Junior" quickly discards."Steamboat Bill Jr." is, in my humble opinion, next to "The General", Keaton's greatest film.

There has never been another actor like Buster Keaton. Others have come close, but none have truly matched his level of physical comedy. And certainly no one else has performed this brand of acting while also directing and writing his own gags. He was and is one of Hollywood's all time greatest stars and filmmakers. And Steamboat Bill Jr. is one of his best works.The story is interchangeable with dozens of other silent comedies. Young man travels to meet father who he has not seen since childhood. Father is not impressed with son. Young man meets love of his life, but their fathers, who are bitter rivals, forbid them to see each other. Old man faces serious legal and/or financial trouble. No points for guessing that the young man will save both his father and the girl from a great peril, or that love will triumph in the end.So it's entirely predictable from beginning to end, but it doesn't matter. We know going in that the plot is little more than a thread to hang the jokes from. We came simply to laugh and be entertained. And rest assured, you will be entertained.Keaton is in full form here, delivering all his now-classic gags. He comes off as a naive innocent and a clumsy oaf, whose every action results in delightful mayhem. When shown the boiler room on his father's steamboat, he of course leans against the wrong lever and rear ends their competitor's boat. His late night attempt to visit his girlfriend inevitably leaves him in the drink. And from the moment I saw his ukulele, I knew it was destined to be destroyed I comic fashion.What makes this material work is that despite their broadness, Keaton's mishaps do seem to be accidents. We never get the sense that he's deliberately being clumsy to make sure we get the joke. In most movies today, many of these gags would be only mildly amusing at best, and quickly become repetitive, yet that doesn't happen here. I wonder if that's because silent film is such a different medium from modern talkies, and creates a different mindset in viewers. Or perhaps it's Keaton's ability to play the material completely strait. He wasn't called the "Stone Face of Comedy" for nothing.And what elevates Steamboat Bill above even Keaton's other works is the fantastic storm sequence. He out-mimes even Marcel Marceau here, pushed along by an imaginary wind, and bending so far forward that we wonder what keeps him from falling down. And the effects are incredible for their time. Buildings collapse or are picked up as though they were doll houses. Keaton at one point clings to an oak tree, and both he and the oak are lifted into the air and deposited in the river. I was at a complete loss to explain how they created many of these effects, the level of technology being what it was.The most amazing scene however, was not an effect at all. The iconic shot of a wall falling on Keaton, who is unharmed because he is standing in the path of an open window, is exactly what it looks like. They actually dropped a two-ton wall on the star, and if he had been more than a few inches off, he could easily have been killed. You just don't see devotion like that today.

It is ironic that the greatest film stunt ever pulled by comedy's finest man in motion, Buster Keaton, involves Keaton doing little more than rubbing the back of his neck as he stands perfectly still.Perfect stillness is hardly apt in describing "Steamboat Bill, Jr.," Buster's final and finest independently-produced comedy. For nearly the entire length of the film, he's stumbling, falling, somersaulting, and splashing around like a total madman. What you get is a distillation of Buster as he made his name in his short-film days, filled out with the help of a riverboat yarn to develop his sentimental side in surprisingly winning ways. Stone face, yes, but stone heart, never!Bleak days are upon Steamboat Bill Canfield (Ernest Torrance), captain of the once-proud, now-near-derelict riverboat Stonewall Jackson. His rival, John James King (Tom McGuire) runs both the town of River Junction as well as a fancy riverboat which he plans to use to put Canfield out of business. With a kind of optimism we recognize at once as misplaced, Steamboat Bill anticipates the arrival of his son from Boston, expecting a tall, strapping lad and not at all someone like Buster outfitted with beret, pencil mustache, and ukulele."If you say what you're thinking," Steamboat Bill Sr. warns his first mate, "I'll strangle you!"A fish-out-of-water comedy that ends up putting everyone in the water, "Steamboat Bill, Jr." spends a surprisingly long time setting the scene and the final 20 minutes sorting it out in a wild, anarchic way that recalls classic Buster shorts like "One Week" and "Cops." It's not an easy Buster film to characterize, requiring the audience to know Buster's history in getting in and out of trouble.You expect he will win over his gruff father, but how? You just know he'll find a way to pay off his affection for King's sweet daughter Kitty (Marion Byron), but how will he square things with her likewise stern dad?There are a bevy of winning scenes in this gag-packed film. Just watch Buster's eyes in an early scene when a barber (played by Buster's real- life father) shaves off his 'stache while Papa Bill glowers over his shoulder. He's so alive to the hilarity of the moment yet gives nothing away, even after the barber plucks a loose hair off his cheek.Demonstrating the unseaworthiness of the "Stonewall Jackson," Buster accidentally knocks a life preserver into the water only to watch it sink like a millstone. Later, trying to impress Kitty, he stands at the deck barking orders to people she can't see aren't really there, only to bid a quick retreat when the first mate approaches to see what he's up to.Torrence is a riot, too, mortified at the Eastern fop he has sired and pushing him about, then getting violently enraged whenever he sees anyone else doing the same. His temper (and King's machinations) finally land him in prison, which Buster tries to help him break out of by baking him a giant loaf of bread stuffed with files and other tools. Big Bill, not knowing what's inside the bread, wants nothing to do with it or his disappointing son."I'll just wait around until he's famished," Buster says, then performs a pantomime for his father mimicking a jailbreak with two fingers and a thumb that reminds me of Charlie Chaplin's similar hijinks with baked goods in "The Gold Rush." Again, Buster's eyes are key to the comedy.I don't know what to believe about the famous story where Buster, told he was about to lose his independence as a filmmaker, allowed himself to be filmed in a life-threatening stunt where a building facade falls on his head, only to leave him unscathed as the open attic window lands directly upon him. It reads too perfect to be believed, because it's the ultimate gesture of a filmmaker's faith in his vision overcoming grim reality. But there it is, Buster's most vividly remembered stunt, as astonishing the 50th time you see it as the first.It's also astonishing how the scene is mere preamble to a lengthy hurricane sequence that amazingly sets all to rights in Buster's topsy- turvy world, a triumph of comic imagination over harsh reality. If Buster never got such a break in real life, it's some compensation to see him effortlessly wind up on top in this sterling comedy milestone.