It’s difficult to intellectually analyze a slapstick gag without killing a vital part of what made it funny in the first place. Yet, Alan Dale, in this brief analysis of the highest points of American slapstick cinema’s first 50 years, somehow manages to render in prose both what’s funny and what’s resonant about the best slapstick without coming off as too much of a stuffed shirt. Comedy is a Man in Trouble is peppered with bits that make you laugh out loud, either at some remembered gag, Dale’s terse summation of a gag you’ve never seen, or—rarest and most precious of all—the nugget of buried truth that makes the best gags timeless.