Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Great Film overall

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Rollicking silent-era comedy from Buster Keaton.Simple yet engaging plot. However, its not the main story that matters, but the many detours on the journey. The whole thing is one random, funny adventure.Some moments of pure genius from Keaton. The dime bank scene was one, and the whole swimming pool scene was another.Great work from Keaton in front of the camera. Good support from Marceline Day. However, the show is almost stolen towards the end by Josephine, the monkey...

Film historians know that Buster Keaton signed on as a contract player with MGM Studios after his contract with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck expired in 1928. His signing was done at the urging of his relatives but against the advice of mega-star comedians Charlie Chaplain and Harold Lloyd. An advantage of the new arrangement was that there would no longer be problems of raising cash since MGM was large and rich. A disadvantage is that Keaton gradually gave up his filmmaking independence, like directing and improvising, to a studio that insisted upon strict control. Even though the box office tabulation would undeniably improve – MGM moguls could claim that they were right after all – the payoff over time would be disastrous for one who was a silent film giant. But the day seemed to be ending for 1920s slapstick silent stars. New comedians were on the rise, like the Marx Brothers (whom Keaton loathed). Whatever Keaton's future problems, the new agreement certainly began well, as his first MGM effort, The Cameraman, shows little, if any, waning from some of his great movies. There are gags galore, and pathos, and on-location shooting, and more. Keaton is a clumsy tintype photographer (appropriately named Buster) who desires to become a great studio newsreel cameraman at MGM Offices in order to impress Sally, a lovely lass. He had met her at a ticker-tape parade (which looks very much like a World War I coming-home gala, 1919). But Buster's first efforts are hopeless, as his double-exposures leave the studio chiefs laughing in stitches. Meanwhile he has inadvertently broken the door glass at MGM several times. So it is that Buster embarks upon New York City to find stories to film while wielding a lumbering movie camera. The upshot is that there are many funny vignettes. Here are a few: (1) The one-man baseball-pantomime at Yankee Stadium with a Ruthian figure in civilian clothes – with hands on hips – observing the action. Actually Buster, looking for action, did not realize that the Yankees were playing the St. Louis Browns on the road that day. (2) Buster running non-stop from his Manhattan place to Sally's before she has hung up the telephone. (3) Buster's attempts to break into his piggy-bank to gather his precious dimes; he damages his apartment. (4) The separation of Buster and Sally on two different levels of the over-crowded Manhattan bus. (5) The clothing change in a locker room. By the way, Sally (Marceline Day) looks fabulous in her 1920s bathing gear. (6) Buster losing his over-sized bathing outfit while in the pool. (7) The hilarious Tong War in Chinatown, with a monkey in a sailor-suit using a machine gun. This scene reminds one of Cheetah machine-gunning Nazis who had invaded Tarzan's African domain years later (1943). (8) The boating scene whereby Buster saves Sally from an unmanned motorboat. His rival, though, initially received the credit and left the romantic Buster heartbroken. It's serendipity that the monkey knew how to operate the movie camera! Look fast for Charles Lindbergh in the parade at movie's end (newsreel footage). This film was followed by Keaton's last silent (with sound effects but without dialog) – the humorous but underrated Spite Marriage (1929). Soon after conditions deteriorated, as 1930 was just around the corner, and the decade of the 1930s was Keaton's worst decade in more ways than one. The star's later state of affairs was not helped along by his extramarital affairs and his drinking. But, for now, the situation looked fine for one whom Roger Ebert ultimately considers the most courageous silent movie comedian of all time. Indeed, Buster Keaton was a unique comedy talent, maybe the greatest one in world cinema history.

Buster Keaton's last great silent film (it was followed by the less memorable 'Spite Marriage') can almost be seen as a textbook lesson on the effects of artistic compromise. After relinquishing his independence to the MGM assembly line Keaton fought hard to maintain at least a semblance of his own peculiar comic integrity, and in that regard the film represents a minor (and short lived) triumph of comedy over bureaucracy.Most of the over-plotted studio script was discarded early in the production, leaving only the necessary framework of a simple story about a hapless tintype portrait seller trying to scoop the latest newsreel headline and win the affection of the girl he loves. That was all the plot Keaton needed to improvise a number of classic routines: the solo ballgame in a deserted Yankee Stadium, an awkward encounter in a crowded poolside changing stall, and a literally riotous Tong war in New York City's Chinatown. As usual Buster is able to overcome every obstacle, by happenstance, luck and divine (actually simian) intervention (it's little Josephine, the organ-grinder monkey, who actually saves the day: one of the few touches of classic Keaton irony in the film).But the erosion of his unique talent is already apparent in the upbeat normality of the scenario and characters, something the comedian casually avoided in his earlier features. The modern, big city setting was an indication of the changes soon to be introduced by sound technology; Harold Lloyd went urban in his final silent feature, 'Speedy', and Chaplin did likewise in 'City Lights' and 'Modern Times'. But, at least for the time being, the best way to win the girl remained the age-old comic combination of ineptitude and heroism.

I give this film high marks from start to finish--however, the modern score is absolutely irritating and awful! It sounds cheap and tuneless. Where's Carl Davis when you need him? As for Keaton, it's a wonderful film for the usual Keatonian reasons, enhanced by the various Manhattan locales. I only wish a more definitive edition could be created with a more authentic, less toy-like sound.Anyway, I saw this on TCM and was delighted and appalled for reasons given above; I recommend that anyone with a creative flair substitute their own vintage music and it'll play far better than the travesty that accompanies this otherwise terrific movie.