- Buster Keaton's The Navigator is everything that I had hoped the middle part of Steamboat Bill, Jr. would be, namely Keaton horsing around on a boat. His character, the well-to-do Rollo Treadway, ends up on an abandoned ship after boarding what he thinks is a cruise to Hawaii. Fortunately, he is not alone. His neighbor and nonreciprocating love interest Betsy (Kathryn McGuire) has also boarded the boat by accident. Trouble is, a cabal of saboteurs has set the boat adrift. The two are left to fend for themselves. The comic possibilities are endless.
- Rollo is the archetypal Keaton character, wonderfully naive and hilariously stoic. After spotting a happily married couple from his mansion window at the film's start, he decides on the spot to propose to Betsy. His chauffeur drives him across the street, he leaves his cane and hat with the butler and immediately asks Betsy to marry him. She turns him down, he retrieves his cane and hat and decides to cross the street on foot, commenting that "a long walk would do (him) good." This same severe cluelessness later permits him to board the nearly abandoned ship before proceeding to try to attract the attention of a non-existent waiter. Needless to say, all of this is played completely straight with Keaton's famously austere "Stone Face" never flashing a hint of self-awareness.
- Once on the ship, the two accidental stowaways take a while to run into one another before encountering a series of comic situations. While there are too many funny moments to list here, I should at least mention how amusing I found the shuffling of wet cards, the inadvertent hoisting of a quarantine flag, and pretty much every scene in the ship's galley. Things only get more absurd from there as the unhappy couple encounters that staple of early maritime cinema, an island full of cannibals. Although the cannibals execute some impressive stunt work, including plenty of climbing and high-diving, the real highlight of the film's end is the underwater sequence. There, Rollo uses a lobster to cut a cable, fences with a swordfish, and wrestles with an octopus. In what is probably the film's most preposterous gag, he even tries to wash his hands while standing on the ocean floor. It's amazing that a film with a such a diverse set of comedic styles and settings handles all of them so well. On the other hand, given that The Navigator followed immediately on the heels of Our Hospitality and Sherlock Jr., all three of which were made in the span of only two years (!), maybe I shouldn't be surprised to have discovered yet another Keaton masterpiece.
- Apparently, Keaton purchased the ship with this movie in mind.
- The image of a sailor that drifts past Rollo's window is actually that of the co-director, Donald Crisp.
