Matrose wider Willen

This is one of many funny and entertaining Harold Lloyd comedies that have been somewhat overshadowed by his better-known masterpieces. Certainly, "A Sailor-Made Man" is not on the level of "Safety Last" or "Speedy" or a few others, but it's an enjoyable feature in its own right, with some good material.

The story has a setup that will be familiar to Lloyd fans, with Harold as one of many suitors for the hand of a society girl played by Mildred Davis. Lloyd's character ends up in the Navy, where he meets up with a roughneck played in entertaining fashion by Noah Young. There are some sequences of slapstick aboard ship, and then the main story resumes when Lloyd meets up again with Davis in an exotic port of call.

There are some interesting settings with plenty of good individual gag ideas, and there are a couple of very good sequences. There's a street fight scene, with Lloyd and Young taking on a gang of toughs, that has some clever touches, plus a fun chase sequence in a harem. It doesn't have any of the terrific set pieces that you find in Lloyd's best movies, but it has more than enough to make it entertaining and enjoyable.

This is Harold Lloyd's first "longer" film, going far longer than what was usual at the time (20-28 minutes per movie) but it moves as fast as movies half the length.

I haven't labeled too many of his films "charming," but that might fit here: charming and funny, of course. It has the usual silent-film wild ending that most feature silent comedies had. Instead of some streets, we have a chase through the Rajah's palace (including a pool) with all kinds of slapstick gags in the mix.

Earlier, rich-boy Harold becomes a common Navy sailor and the scenes on the ship, although not laugh-out-loud comedy, are in that charming category as the big bully seaman winds up being Harold's friend and fan.

All in all, without going into the whole story, it's simply a nice movie: nothing spectacular but definitely worth watching.

While this film isn't really as long as most feature films, it is longer than a short and really falls in between the two types of films in length.

This film was remade three years later as WHY WORRY? though there were some changes made in the plot--enough that I recommend you see both. However the overall themes and plot elements are interchangeable. In both he's a rich guy who needs to grow up and be more industrious, and in both he ultimately rescues his lady while in a foreign land. In WHY WORRY? the setting was a revolution on a South American island and in this film it was a Muslim nation and its leader who kidnaps the lady to put her in his harem.

The general direction of the plot is pure Lloyd formula--wimpy guy meets girl and somehow rises to the occasion to fight for and win her. This is nicely made but not exactly different from many of his other films in this sense. It's worth seeing, but other films such as THE FRESHMAN, GIRL SHY and SPEEDY are better Lloyd vehicles.

It's the Abington Arms, an ultra fashionable summer resort. The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is an idle rich heir to $20 million. He falls for The Girl (Mildred Davis) who is pursued by many suitors. Her steel magnate father demands that he go do something worthwhile like getting a job. He decides to join the Navy.

This is a fun Harold Lloyd film with his classic bespectacled everyman. It doesn't have his building climbing exploits but it does have some slapstick and general physical humor. An extra does some nice magic tricks. It's a fun 45 minutes.

A pretty unremarkable Harold Lloyd comedy that finds our scrappy hero unwittingly signing on with the U.S. Navy in order to impress a girl. You can probably guess the physical and sight gags that go along with life on a Navy vessel, and then a large portion of the latter half of the film finds Harold in an unnamed Arabian country single-handedly fighting hordes of sword-wielding goons in order to rescue his fair love, who's been kidnapped by a wealthy sultan. There isn't a whole lot to remember about this film -- I had to look it up just to remind myself of what the plot was about -- but Harold Lloyd fans know that even his lesser films provide a good deal of entertainment.

Grade: B