Best movie of this year hands down!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Chaplin claimed that all he needed to make a comedy was "a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl." One A.M. proves that all he needed was a camera and some film; this is 20+ minutes of a nearly static shot of Chaplin acting like a drunk, and the whole thing is hilarious.Chaplin manages, somehow, to generate real suspense about whether the lush will successfully make it up the stairs. I can imagine audiences of the period groaning and applauding in packed houses.This is one of Chaplin's simplest shorts, but I prefer it in many ways to the shorts with a tacked-on plot involving a harridan wife, a fat drinking buddy, and a series of misunderstandings. In those movies, everything is just a framing device to set up Chaplin's physical comedy. Here, he dispenses with the narrative and gives you the slapstick undiluted. (In the best Chaplin films, of course-even in excellent early shorts like the Floorwalker-the plot is more than a pretext; there are real characters and meaningful stakes.)

At Mutual, Chaplin had more freedom, and the result was the funniest and most entertaining short films he ever made. 'One A.M.' is one of his most experimental Mutual shorts: how many laughs can he get from a 20-some-minutes drunken solo, where, for the most part, he only interacts with inanimate objects (although the Murphy bed seems very alive). He got many from me.Chaplin did a hilarious drunk act--that's evident in many of his other films, as well: 'The Rounders' (1914), a Keystone short costarring an equally funny 'Fatty' Arbuckle, comes to mind, as does another of his Mutual shorts, 'The Cure' (1917). Moreover, Chaplin's tendency to portray a dandy as a drunk, rather than a tramp, which could cause the humour to lose out to melancholic social commentary, was prudent. Making fun of the tacky and ridiculous possessions of an overly dressed bachelor is more of sure thing. Chaplin's dandy--even his tramp personae--owes plenty to Max Linder, too, as Chaplin himself often cited.Another influence worth mentioning here is his background in Fred Karno's Fun Factory troupe. The only filmmakers other than Chaplin who are provided with much to do in 'One A.M.' it seems are those in care of the props and setting. 'One A.M.' could have as easily have been a music hall act as a short film. Nevertheless, all of this does make for a unique film in Chaplin's canon. By now, it's clear that Chaplin had matured from the rapid-paced, knockabout style of Keystone for a more graceful pantomime. That's not to say there aren't pratfalls and other tried-and-true gags here, but the temperament is radically different.

Chaplin plays a drunk who spends the entire film trying to get into his house and go to bed. In a comedic experiment, Chaplin appears alone in this film, aside from Albert Austin, who briefly appears at the beginning as a cab driver. Chaplin draws the humor from his interaction with various objects around the house, most humorously with a hostile Murphy bed. Is this comic experiment successful? Yes, for the most part. It is a funny short, but, in my opinion, nowhere near his funniest. Still, one must admire Chaplin's boldness. When one watches this film, one sees a talented film maker testing the limits of skills. Bravo.

This short film numbers among Chaplin's best, and is a stunning example of his skill as a silent physical comedic actor. However, one has to enjoy silent, completely non-verbal, comedy in the first place. While I laughed almost non-stop through this entire film, close friends of mine, who were not entertained by Chaplin's physical gaffes, quickly lost interest.