Director: Ted Wilde
Cast: Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Bert Woodruff, Babe Ruth
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: Lloyd’s final silent film—and by natural extension, his final film to succeed at the level he previously enjoyed—is a startlingly modern movie, and that’s only partially because it’s copyright was so up-to-date that the film comes complete with a New Line Cinema vanity card*.
It’s not entirely a good thing, though. Lloyd is still able to flail and fling with the best of his contemporaries, but being ahead of its time could bring it into something less desirable. In this instance, lowers the entire film from being in that upper pantheon of silent comedies, and limits it to being something a mark more pedestrian.
It’s obsession with baseball leading up to a supporting role for Babe Ruth and a cameo from Lou Gehrig almost puts the entirety of the film at home with an average sitcom. Average may even be something of a strong word to use there. Filling a current series with celebrity cameos can certainly be a sign that the creative direction has veered off course, but a plot line taking the characters on vacation and being a travelogue for some giant tourist attraction is absolute death. So it is that I’m a little underwhelmed to report that my big takeaway from the film is that Coney Island in the 1920s is a perfectly splendid way to spend a Sunday. You might even get a loyal dog out of the deal.
Looking into the film a bit, apparently a slightly augmented sound version of the film was released less than a year after the initial release, but something tells me that version of the film is less the perfect silent-sound fusion/peak of the silent form that was Modern Times (1936) and more just something to play in the theaters that were upgraded for synchronized sound.
*It did eventually fall into public domain last year, otherwise I can’t imagine I would ever end up seeing it in the theater.