AllMovie

The basic plot of Wife's Relations involves the romance between heroine Shirley Mason and erstwhile inventor Gaston Glass. Forget that noise: The film's principal attraction was cross-eyed comedian Ben Turpin, cast as Mason's zany father. Well-teamed with scrawny Flora Finch, Turpin goes through his standard slapstick repertoire, extracting belly laughs from the slimmest of circumstances. The film's highlight is a disastrous plumbing sequence, which would be endlessly imitated in future years by such comedians as the Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello. Though obviously tired and aging, Ben Turpin proved withal that he still had what it took to reduce an audience to helpless laughter.