A One Night Stand

Enjoyable as a cultural document, above all else, giving us an idea of how touring companies worked in the early 20th century. It's too confined and repetitive to be wholly successful.

And is Harold Lloyd really in this? I couldn't spot him...

This film has a very broad idea for a story but it's obvious that there really wasn't any working script. Believe it or not, that was standard practice at the Keystone Studios, as Mack Sennett was responsible for hundreds and hundreds of shorts during this time period and they hardly ever had anything resembling a script. Most of the time, it was just a very broad story idea and the actors were told to "just improvise and be funny"! Sometimes, this worked anyways, as some of the actors (such as Chaplin) were occasionally able to do some brilliant work. However, even with the best actors, many of these films just look like people improvising it--with lots of dull moments punctuated by slaps and pratfalls. In this film, this is pretty much all that happens and the film isn't particularly watchable today by anyone other than die-hard silent fans or film historians.

By the way, when I saw this film, it listed Harold Lloyd among the credits but he did not appear to be in the film. Fortunately, on IMDb, he isn't listed and I truly doubt if he had anything to do with this mediocre film.