What’s the World Coming To? (1926)

whats-the-world-coming-to-1926-038An enjoyable 1926 vision of the world a hundred years in the future when gender roles are reversed. Men wear make-up and dresses while women wear ties and pants. Men stay home in frilly robes reading gossip columns while women take flying cars to work. Men are emotional dandelions while women are stoic until stirred to violence. When it comes to antique futurism in the movies, this twenty-minute comedy fluff from the Hal Roach factory is more prescient than, say, Things to Come. It’s a disarmingly modern work that jives neatly with 2016’s hot topic of gender fluidity, but it’s also so straight-faced that one could interpret it as a criticism of the time, for better or worse, of where women’s liberation could lead, if that’s how you prefer to swing in this dance. Or, what the hey, maybe, just maybe, it could merely be a platform for silent comedian Clyde Cook to take pratfalls in a dress.