It's pretty rare to find anyone who praises D. W. Griffith for his comedies. Most people who know Griffith today for his wrongly interpreted "Birth of a Nation" and its exciting action scenes and suspense probably don't know that he was also the filmmaker of some rather quaint short comedies back in the day. "Getting Even" falls in this category, and like many other shorts of Griffith this early on (which in fact constitute the majority of the number of films he produced) it's somewhat strange to see Griffith go along with the standard drawn out long shots that marked pretty much every film in the day. But this is indeed most of what Griffith did before he became a master of some of the finest filmmaking techniques, and "Getting Even", being before 1912, is no exception.
The film is a simple revenge tale basically, about a guy who is humiliated by other men as he tries to talk to a woman (who, according to the full summary, is apparently the object of everyone's affections). To get revenge, he dresses up as a woman and goes to a local dance where the same men are, and they all begin falling in love with the guy without realizing they just got pranked. It's definitely an odd story for Griffith to be telling, but one can't complain as the comedy is fairly good for its time and the film is short enough to where it's no waste of time. Mainly worth seeing to see a Griffith comedy if nothing else, even though it's not as well known as the most widely viewed comedy of his, "Those Awful Hats" (from the same year).
The film is a simple revenge tale basically, about a guy who is humiliated by other men as he tries to talk to a woman (who, according to the full summary, is apparently the object of everyone's affections). To get revenge, he dresses up as a woman and goes to a local dance where the same men are, and they all begin falling in love with the guy without realizing they just got pranked. It's definitely an odd story for Griffith to be telling, but one can't complain as the comedy is fairly good for its time and the film is short enough to where it's no waste of time. Mainly worth seeing to see a Griffith comedy if nothing else, even though it's not as well known as the most widely viewed comedy of his, "Those Awful Hats" (from the same year).