La vertu récompensée

This Harold Lloyd comedy is both very enjoyable and very thoughtful, and it works especially well considering that it was made during a time in Lloyd's career when he was gradually making a transition in the way that he portrayed his characters on-screen. The story and the characters bear many resemblances to Charlie Chaplin's popular comedies of the same era, but Lloyd and director Alfred Goulding give it a style and tone of its own.

Lloyd plays a penniless drifter who befriends a very young street waif, played with charm by Peggy Courtwright, whose character is accompanied by an equally endearing dog. The three of them are rescued from a scrape with authorities by an heiress played by Mildred Davis, who turns out to have some worries of her own.

After a bit of a slow start, things pick up, and it works very well, combining the different story lines with plenty of slapstick and some very thoughtful moments as well. Most of the themes are familiar ones, but it does a good job with them, and Lloyd succeeds with some material that is rather different from that in most of his movies.

This is quite a good Harold Lloyd short, perhaps the best I've watched so far. During the first reel, the comedy centers somewhat uneasily around the lead character's poverty - but then it picks up with a lengthy chase involving the entire police district (actually anticipating Buster Keaton's more celebrated COPS [1922]); likewise, Lloyd's ineptitude as a burglar brings to mind Laurel & Hardy's later Talkie short NIGHT OWLS (1930). The subplot about an attempt to fleece heroine Mildred Davis out of an inheritance (by a shady lawyer with the revealing name of Leech) is also interesting; given a macabre spin, it would soon see service in many an 'old dark house' thriller. Apart from Davis, Lloyd is supported in this one by two other amiable characters - a little street girl and her brave injured dog.

The Boy (Harold Lloyd) has no money for food. Neither does The Waif and her little dog. The Girl (Mildred Davis) is an innocent heiress being robbed of her inheritance without her knowledge. The Boy gets tricked into leading her kidnappers. All he really wants is the food. When she get kidnapped, he sets off to rescue her.

It's the first pairing of Harold Lloyd and his future wife Mildred Davis. The story is simple. Lloyd has plenty of good humor and a few minor stunts. Leading the cops is the comedic highlight. It's a good solid 22 minutes.

In this enjoyable Harold Lloyd comedy, our boy Harold (playing a down-and-outer whose acquaintances include a scrappy little beggar girl and her lame dog) finds himself coming to the aid of a pretty heiress whose inheritance is in danger of being weasled away by a shyster lawyer in cahoots with a gang of thugs. Every Lloyd film has a rollicking climax full of visual stunts, and the one to this movie shows Harold verbally or physically assaulting every police officer in the city in an attempt to lead them to the gang's lair.

Everything comes right in the end, as Harold, heiress, beggar girl and dog get to sit down to a mighty dinner and we get to turn off the T.V. with a smile on our faces.

Lively comedy from Harold Lloyd that no doubt provided Buster Keaton with the 'inspiration' for Cops in 1922. He's an impoverished young man who redeems himself after being suckered into burgling the house of the heiress who earlier saved him from arrest. The heiress is played by his future wife Mildred Davis. Nothing groundbreaking, but enjoyable enough.