Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Masterpiece!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. He did do better than 'Those Love Pangs', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Those Love Pangs' is a long way from a career high (nor is it a misfire), but has good efforts and one of the average/middling efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.'Those Love Pangs' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused, the content is not particularly inspired and some of it is on the repetitive side.For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Those Love Pangs' is not bad at all and there are flashes of his distinctive style, meaning that he was showing signs of evolving. While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy. Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Those Love Pangs' is amusing and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. Overall, average but far from a bad effort. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This film is another one of Chaplin's park comedies. Chaplin's rival this time is Chester Conklin of bushy mustache fame. The girls are of questionable repute, which must have been part of the joke when first released. There's plenty of nice physical comedy and the usual slapstick in this film, but for the most part, it's more of the same from Chaplin during his Keystone period. For the third film in a row, Chaplin finds a unique way of lighting a cigarette. The film degenerates into a brawl inside a theater at the end, as Chaplin finds everything cozy next to both a blonde and a brunette. Both are soon replaced by Chester Conklin and another guy; a brawl ensues, and Chaplin is thrust through the theater canvas by the seat of his pants. Not one of the better early Chaplin films. *1/2 of 4 stars.

In The Rival Mashers, Chaplin is in full Tramp form and with plenty of kicking and punching and yanking people around with his cane, although I have to say that there are at least a few things that make this film stand out among the huge number that he was churning out for Keystone in 1914. First of all, it contains what has to be Charlie's most stylish cigarette lighting ever, it's classic. He oozes hilarious confidence, he's almost like a mobster. Also, it is one of the few films where a woman passes by him and stops to check him out, rather than the other way around.I also found it interesting that Chester Conklin seems to be trying to copy Charlie's outfit. He appears in pants which are wildly too big for him and hang limply off his hips, an outrageously tiny shirt and tie and an ill-fitting jacket, a little too similar to Chaplin's classic outfit not to notice. It should be noted, however, that Conklin ultimately performed in nearly 300 films, almost four times as many as Chaplin, but there is clearly no question about who was the more talented filmmaker and/or actor.At any rate, The Rival Mashers, also known as Those Love Pangs (this was still back when all of Chaplin's films had a whole list of different names, mostly due to callous re-editing and re-releasing), is one of his lesser man-woman-cop-in-the-park comedies, as very little happens other than a few mildly amusing gags and a few appearances of what would become Chaplin's unmistakable style. Expectations were much lower back then for these films (as they should remain today when watching them), but Chaplin had done much better before.

I've seen quite a few Chaplin shorts from early in his career and I've noticed that his early stuff (done for Keystone Studios) is pretty dreadful stuff. Unlike his wonderful full-length films from the 20s and 30s, the films from 1914-1915 are incredibly poorly made--having no script but only vague instructions from the director. In most cases, the films had almost no plot and degenerated to people punching and kicking each other.This film has a modest amount of plot, but really the film can be summed up as "punching, slapping and bonking on the head while chasing women". This isn't exactly deep or rewarding to watch as a result. My advice is try watching a later Chaplin short or one of his full-length films.