Going to Congress (1924)

movie

(24)

Country: USA
Genres: Comedy, Short
Release: 1924-05-25
Director: Rob Wagner
Writers: Will Rogers
Language: None | English
Stars: Will Rogers , Marie Mosquini , Molly Thompson , Jack Ackroyd , Lassie Lou Ahern , Chet Brandenburg , Sammy Brooks , Richard Daniels , William Gillespie , Clara Guiol
Runtime: 20 min
Awards: N/A
AKA: Going to Congress , Going to Congress (Germany) , Going to Congress (United States of America)
Plot: Going to Congress (1924) ** (out of 4) This isn't a very good film but it does have a rather interesting history to it. This Hal Roach short was made so that it could be shown at the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention and it appears the film was trying to take a few jabs at the people who would be watching it. Will Rogers plays Alfalfa Doolittle, a lazy man without any criminal past who is hand picked by a group of men to run for Congress. He's selected for no other reason than the group feels he will be dumb enough to say what they want so he's elected. That's pretty much all the story there is to this thing as everything else is pretty much just a checklist of events that Doolittle must do in order to get to Congress. This includes giving nice speeches, saying no new taxes and of course kissing some babies. The baby kissing sequence is rather interesting because Doolittle is doing a lot of kissing until a black woman tries to hand him the black baby, which he then rushes off so he doesn't have to kiss it. Some might see this scene as a racial joke that was common in 1924 but I took it more as showing how double-sided certain politicians are. One second he wants the black vote yet the next he's unwilling to kiss a baby. None of the visual stuff here is very funny as all the laughs actually come from some nicely written and rather slick title cards. There are many jokes about various parts of the government and I found a lot of them to be funny. This is one short where there's just about more title cards than anything else. Rogers is pretty good in his part even though the screenplay doesn't give him much to do.
IMDB:tt0246652