Synopsis
A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.
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Cast
- Peter BogdanovichNarrator (voice)
- Buster KeatonSelf (archive footage)
- James KarenSelf
- Dick Van DykeSelf
- Johnny KnoxvilleSelf
- Paul DooleySelf
- French StewartSelf
- Richard LewisSelf
- Carl ReinerSelf
- Bill HaderSelf
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
In The Great Buster, Bogdanovich has provided a brilliantly enthralling primer. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
The mix of commentators is unusual and lively, hardly the usual crowd that often pops up in documentaries like this, the clips are illustrative and on point in addition to often being eye-popping, and the film looks certain to please Keaton aficionados. Most importantly, it's likely to induce newcomers to investigate the great stone face for themselves. - 75
Movie Nation
Great Buster turns Bogdanovich’s lifelong appreciation into cinematic adoration, using generous clips of Keaton’s short films, features and late-life TV appearances to remind us that, as Johnny Knoxville says in the movie, “he was funny then, he’s funny now and he’ll be funny 100 years from now.” - 70
The New York Times
The film presents a compact, tactful biography and also a valuable explication of the Keatonesque in its most sublime varieties. Coming ahead of a digital restoration of Keaton’s major films, it serves as both a primer and refresher, as well as a promise that he will not be forgotten. - 70
Los Angeles Times
The Great Buster briskly takes us through the stations of Keaton’s eventful life and career, mostly going the expected chronological route with one key exception. - 67
IndieWire
Keaton was an ahead-of-his-time innovator, and though Bogdanovich honors that legacy he doesn’t always live up to it: You’ll leave the film knowing more about its subject than you did when you walked in, but there’s little here that feels like it couldn’t be found in one of the many other accounts of Keaton’s life and work. - 67
The Playlist
It aims for simplicity, for a celebration of his unrivaled talents, and often fails to explore the complexity of the very man at its center. - 65
Film Journal International
Working with Keaton’s own material, Bodganovich is too busy praising the artist to bother saying anything novel about him.
