When I did the AFI Countdown back in 2018, I had already seen most of the movies on the list, but there were a couple I was unfamiliar with. Most notably, I had never until then seen a Charlie Chaplin movie. The original AFI Top 100 list had three of them, and I discovered I actually rather liked them. Chaplin is a charming comedic presence, a well-meaning but somewhat clumsy Tramp who just tried to get by in the world, and who could sometimes be counted on to do what he could for the less fortunate around him even when he had nothing to call his own. Chaplin’s expressive face and physical comedy skills really showed me why he was one of the biggest stars of the silent era.
Then I found Chaplin’s directorial debut The Kid was included with Amazon Prime video. Why not check it out?
The Kid is something of an odd duck given my previous experiences with Chaplin. Though he wasn’t above including sentimental moments in his movies, The Kid seems to have more than most. That may have something to do with the basic plot. A poor, single woman gives birth to a baby, and, in a moment she soon comes to regret, leaves the infant in the back seat of a wealthy couple’s car with a note asking them to care for her baby boy. She soon changes her mind, but by then through a series of strange incidents, the child ends up in an alley where it is found by Chaplin’s Tramp. Though he initially tries to divest himself of the baby, he eventually takes the kid home, names him “John” (the only name listed in the entire movie), and raises the boy as his own.
Meanwhile, the boy’s mother spends the next five years searching for the lad. She becomes a rich and successful stage actress, does a lot of charity work for the poor neighborhoods, and feels miserable for what she’s done.
And that’s more or less the plot. The Woman (Edna Purviance) basically just wants her child back, and the Tramp and the Kid (future Uncle Fester Jackie Coogan) love each other while doing what they have to in order to survive with some small time scams where the Kid breaks a window and the Tramp conveniently comes by with a means of replacing a window.
Now, one thing I picked up on with the other Chaplin movies is that they often didn’t have much of a plot so much as a series of loosely connected scenes that set up funny moments for Chaplin to act out. Modern Times, for example, famously features Chaplin going through the gears of a giant machine, but that movie also has him getting a job as a nightwatchman, going to jail and accidentally stopping a prison break, and even singing a nonsense song where the audience got to hear his actual voice even if he doesn’t actually say any real words. The Gold Rush has a more cohesive plot, but whom the Tramp is associating with depends on what point of the movie you’re watching. Even City Lights, which comes closest to matching The Kid‘s more melodramatic moments, takes time off for the Tramp to enter an amateur boxing match to raise some money for himself. Maybe it’s because the movie only clocks in at just over an hour, but The Kid‘s plot is a lot more cohesive than the other movies I’ve seen.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t get some genuinely funny set pieces. The Tramp seems to be getting somewhere when the Kid takes on a slightly larger boy in a fistfight, and it turns into something resembling a boxing match, with the Tramp giving the Kid some fighting pointers. Problems arise when the other child’s adult brother, a much larger and stronger man than the Tramp, shows up to threaten the Tramp if the Kid knocks the bigger man’s kid brother out. Naturally, despite the Tramp’s best efforts, the Kid prevails and now the Tramp has to keep out of reach of a man who punches through a brick wall at one point. These are the sorts of moments a more casual fan like myself can appreciate.
But this is easily, of the four Chaplin movies I have seen, the most melodramatic. We get frequent appearances by the Woman, and she’s not played in any way, shape, or form as a humorous character. Likewise, we see how desperate the Tramp can be when he loses the Kid at various points in the movie, doing whatever he can to stay with a little boy he thinks of as his son. The movie has a happy ending for all involved, but it’s an earned happy ending after all three of the main characters go through serious periods of sadness.
All that melodrama means The Kid didn’t grab me as well as I had hoped it would. It’s still a fine movie, but I know Chaplin had better movies in him than this one. I wouldn’t use this as a first Chaplin experience for the uninitiated as he made better, more creative movies down the road, but it was still fun.
Grade: B
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