La Chasse au renard

Coat-room checker O'Reilly becomes part of high society.That's because Mrs. O'Brien wants to be a member of the society and she hosts a fox hunt.She wants to invite Lord Abernathy and she mentions this to the society pilot.But this woman and her confederate have a scheme in mind so they turn this young man into the lord.Among Those Present (1921) is a Harold Lloyd three-reeler.It's directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and the writers are Hal Roach and Sam Taylor.Lloyd is as funny as always in the lead.The lovely Mildred Davis plays Miss O'Brien.James T. Kelley is her father while Aggie Herring portrays the mother.Vera White plays Society Pilot and William Gillespie is Hard-Boiled Party.There are plenty of hilarious moments in this short.One funny sequence is when Harold lies about his hunting experiences.Or when he rides Dynamite.That's a bad-tempered horse.And it's a riot when Harold loses his pants.Lloyd has done it again!

Harold Loyd is pretty funny, and a good physical comic. Among Those Present deals with the contrast between high society and the rest of us. It seems to have been a more popular theme during the 1920s than it is now. (Cf., The Great Gatsby.) Not that we don't have our share of contemporary explorations of the same issue, as in Trading Places, but now the contrast seems to be more about wealth and less about "class" in the old fashioned sense.

The first half of Among Those Present has Loyd imitating a British aristocrat, telling ridiculous stories about "the hunt" to an assembly of awed guests at a tony party, and trying to ride a horse that others refer to as a "brute." (The subsequent ride is more imaginative than the similar one in Auntie Mame.) In the second half, Loyd has lost his trousers escaping from a bull through a barbed wire fence but doesn't realize it. This is the most outlandishly amusing part of the film. No matter how Loyd tries to cover up the fact that he is pantsless, the attempt fails. It's like Laurel and Hardy trying to change trousers after their escape from prison. Probably the single funniest moment in the movie is when Loyd, still in his skivvies, finds himself hopping froglike past a couple of dignified ladies on a bench. (I won't explain what led up to this.)

I laughed out loud a few times even though I wasn't in a particularly good mood while watching it. I mean, my brain hadn't been chemically altered or anything. It's quite amusing.

This isn't one of Harold Lloyd's better films, it has to be said. He was at his best when delivering physical thrills and humour at breakneck speed, but there's precious little of it here. That's not to say Lloyd's humour couldn't be as effective when it was delivered at a more low-key level, but he needed to mix it up a little with his more dangerous stunts in order to get the cocktail right. Here he plays a bell boy who dreams of being a playboy, and gets the opportunity when he's offered the chance to pose as a wealthy aristocrat at a swanky social gathering. Unknown to Harold, the guy and his girlfriend who invited him are planning to scam the hostess out of her millions. The woman just happens to be the mother of Mildred Davis – an ever-present fixture in Lloyd's movies in those days – so naturally everything turns out alright in the end.

The second half of the film sees Harold losing his pants as he encounters a small zoo-load of animals: Skunks, snakes, bulls, goats, geese and dogs all try to take a bite out of our hero, and it's this part of the film that delivers the bulk of the laughs and prevents the film from being a complete flop.

Harold Lloyd pretends to be a hoity-toity Englishman among a bunch of aristocrats in this really funny short comedy.

Lloyd's comedies were always funny in direct proportion to the amount of physical slapstick he built into them, and this one has loads to spare. Most notable is an extended gag that finds Lloyd without pants, freaking out every proper English lady he comes across while trying to save his ass from being bitten off by a grumpy dog. All of this craziness is of course for a girl (what other reason could there possibly be?) and all ends happily enough.

Grade: A-

Poor Neil Doyle who switched off after half the film; he missed the best part of the movie - Lloyd with no trousers. How society has changed since the days when a man with bare legs was enough to send women into a faint (I write as I sit on the beach in just a pair of trunks!).

The scene the lion also comic gold. Was it Woody who reprised this scene with an octopus?

Not one of Lloyd's best but still enough great moments to make it worthwhile (although it does come as a shock when Lloyd's character is given the name O'Reilly at the end!).