the audience applauded

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Keaton shorts are often a tale of two halves, as though he came up with two separate ten minute skits, then combined them - and with 'Cops' we have one excellent half followed by one lesser one.Buster does not make a very good businessman. In attempt to prove his value to a girl, he manages to steal money, pay two men for possessions they do not own, before riding a horse and cart into the middle of a police parade and throwing out a lit bomb. All of this happens completely accidentally of course, and up until the bomb incident Buster is looking quite content with his assumed progress. Afterwards an epic chase scene ensues, where he must evade the whole police force.Like all Keaton films this runs at a quick pace, and the first half is very humorous. The second half manages to take one of the most common scenes in silent cinema - the police chase - and blow it up to epic proportions. It is quite possible this was done in parody of the genre, but it is still yet another police chase scene, which, once you've seen numerous already, can become a bit monotonous.

Buster Keaton has certainly caused a lot of mayhem in his films, but getting the entire police force of a huge city against him is a first, even for him. This is exactly what happens in "Cops", s silent black-and-white comedy film from 1922. At this point, the end of Buster Keaton's short film career wasn't really far anymore and the end of the careers of Joe Roberts and Virginia Fox wasn't too far anymore either. Keaton wrote and directed this film together with Edward F. Cline, his longtime collaborator and Cline, as almost always, plays a minor character in here again as well. The huge star, however, is Keaton again. Sadly, the action and comedy in this film was not great enough to keep me interested. The ending was interesting though as you don't see such that frequently in films, especially back in the 1910s and 1920s, but it certainly added a bit of the "sad" factor to Keaton's movies in general. However, I do not recommend "Cops". I cannot really see why this was inducted in the National Film Registry.

Cops is perhaps Buster's best short. It's my favorite, at any rate, and that's saying something, because as great as many of his features from the 20s were, his two-reelers were probably his best work. In them he perfected the least sentimental of his personas: an opportunistic, somewhat roguish chap, who doesn't mind getting into a scrape over a girl or a bit of a scam, but who usually manages to get out of it with his wit, athleticism and charm.Keaton invented so much of cinema as we know it today, and rarely gets credit for it, so you really should seek out and watch as much of his pictures from the 1920s as you can.

This seems to be Buster Keaton's most popular short film. I prefer his films with more cinematically based comedy, such as in "The Playhouse", "The Frozen North" and "Sherlock, Jr.", but "Cops" is a very entertaining little film. It features a large comedic chase--chases, especially involving policemen, being one of the most regularly reoccurring devices in Keaton's oeuvre, especially in his two-reelers. Cops chased Keaton in "Convict 13", "Neighbors", "Hard Luck", "The Goat" and--in an escalated chase very similar to that in "Cops"--"Daydreams". My favorite Keaton chase, by the way, is the chase of the brides in "Seven Chances".The comedic chase has a long cinema tradition, perhaps dating back to James Williamson's "Stop Thief!" (1901) or "Chinese Laundry Scene" (1895), the latter of which was based on a vaudeville act. Then, there were the Pathé comedies and those of Mack Sennett's Keystone, which were greatly derived from them. Keaton came from vaudeville and worked under one of the premiere early comedians, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, to begin his on screen career, so he was fully immersed in this tradition.In "Cops", there are some good visual jokes that rely on film technique, such as following a close shot of Keaton behind bars with a reverse long shot that clarifies the opening scene. Keaton's mechanical inventiveness is demonstrated during the horse carriage sequence. And, there's plenty of physical comedy during the great chase finale. Keaton's sense of matured, restrained comedy is also important here, which is perhaps best characterized by his retained stoic expression throughout any chaotic misadventure. "Cops" is rather representative of Keaton's refined sense of what's funny and of his advanced understanding of film-making.