On n'entre pas

The boss has a popular daughter. She has two mushy suitors who have waited five months to "ask father". The boy (Harold Lloyd) is doing everything to court her and faces every hurdle.

It's a thirteen minute comedic short. It's good slapstick. The two suitors should be combined into one rival and constant bully. The treadmill is funny although I don't understand why the office would have that. The pillow is a funny bit and that sells the telephone girl. She could have more screen time. Finally near the end, he does some impressive climbing. Quite frankly, he should end the story out there if possible.

For those not too familiar with life almost a hundred years ago, the phrase "Ask father," meant you better get the old man's approval if you want to marry his daughter. That was a MUST, and sets up the premise for this Harold Lloyd short. He, along with several other guys, are all after the same woman but must get to the father. Unfortunately, he's a tough business leader who runs an office like a dictatorship and one runs the risk of being thrown out on his rear trying to get in and see him.

That's the gag of the movie, which doesn't really have much spark until the last six minutes when Harold gets inventive in ways to see the boss, such as wearing a suit or armor.

Without giving anything away, I will say this movie might be the ultimate in showing how lightly marriage has always been treated in the films. This is a comedy, however, so nothing to take serious anyway. I did laugh, too, at the end, when we see how much true love meant to Harold (hint: not a whole lot, as it turns out.)

In this Harold Lloyd comedy short, Lloyd plays one of many suitors wooing a rich girl with a very busy father. In order to win her hand, they have to get her father's permission first -- if they can even get an appointment to see him, that is.

This funny film is chock-full of physical pratfalls and sight gags. Lloyd storms the father's office, determined to talk to him at all costs, even if he has to don a suit of armor, impersonate a rampaging suffragette and out smart any number of office booby traps, not the least of which is a movable walk way that sends unwanted visitors sailing out the door.

I loved the ending of this movie too. Let's just say that things aren't always worth the effort it takes to obtain them.

Three suitors, one of who is Harold, are wooing a rich girl. Each time one of them asks to marry her, she replies "Ask father." So Harold tries to do so. The problem is, the father will see no one without an appointment – and he won't make appointments! The crux of the plot is Harold, using various stratagems and disguises, tries to get to see the father. He is repeatedly thrown out. One of the on-going gags is having Bebe Daniels place a cushion where Lloyd is likely to land after being thrown out. That was my favorite gag but I also liked Lloyd's climb up the side of the building. To me, the moving floor bit was pretty weak. Snub Pollard doesn't have much to do in this film and is thus forgettable. Bebe Daniels, however, is effervescent and has quite a screen presence. Seeing this reminded me of seeing her in the Zorro spoof "Senorita" many years ago at a film festival – she was marvelous and the movie was really funny.

Film historians who have studied Harold Lloyd movies cite the year 1919 as being pivotal to the comedian. He began to balance delicately on a fine line between sentiment and sentimentality. There is no finer example of this transition than in his February 1919's "Ask Father."

The ritual of asking a girlfriend's dad for his daughter's hand has always been a high tension, nerve racking ritual for the prospective son-in-law. Lloyd puts the formality to the test when his girlfriend says she won't marry him without her father's permission. The hitch is her dad is almost impossible to see during his working hours, the only time he can be seen.

Witnessing several people being physically kicked out of the father's office, Lloyd knows this won't be easy. Fortunately, he has two things going for him. Next door to the office is a costume shop. And secondly, the office's secretary, Bebe Daniels, has a pillow she sets up strategically to cushion his fall whenever he gets thrown out. "Ask Father" is also one of Lloyd's first movies he's shown scaling a building's wall, something he exaggerates in his most famous film, "Safety Last!"