The Pilgrim

A very typical Chaplin production, only shorter. It's a purer comedy compared to most of his feature length films, but in the end that didn't make all that big of a difference to me. I simply can't stand Chaplin's most famous character (the Tramp), which makes his films very difficult to sit through.

Chaplin plays a convict who just escaped from prison. He arrives in a small, God-loving town, people there mistake him for a pastor. Because he has nowhere else to go, he decides to play along, but he really has no experience and of course it doesn't take long before he starts messing up.

I'm not a big slapstick fan to begin with, but there's just something about Chaplin that irks me. I don't think he's funny at all, the jokes are dire, the film is slow and feels like a selection of random sketches and there's way too much repetition. It's simply unpleasant from start to finish.