Quel phénomène!

How many bludgeonings can you have in a movie before it ceases to be funny? My five year old and I might disagree on this, but I think that Harold Lloyd crossed that subtle line in this movie. It started off cute and funny, but quickly became sadistic. Compared to Hot Water and Safety Last, this was a poor comedy; however, compared to the Three Stooges or The Ritz Brothers, it wasn't bad.

Maybe hitting several dozen Chinese immigrants in the head with a club was funnier back then...

Harold Lloyd's first talkie is an uneasy transitional film between the silent and the sound era. It was originally made to be a silent, and it was re-written, and much of it was re-filmed in order to make it play. What would have been best for the movie would have been to cut out the fat. It goes on for far too long, just five minutes short of two hours, which must have been Lloyd's longest film. And I've read that the original cut was nearly three hours! I love Harold more than anybody, but two hours is a little too much. I couldn't even imagine a longer version. It is a pretty good comedy, though. There are a handful of brilliant comedy bits, and Harold Lloyd, more so than either Keaton or Chaplin, was just as good in his talkies as he was in his silents. There's also a lot of brutal slapstick. That was always a part of Lloyd's work, more than Keaton's or Chaplin's, but not even the Three Stooges are this violent! Harold must brain about thirty people. It is mostly funny – I'll give him that credit – but sometimes I had to give his enemies a sympathy `OUCH!' In the film's very funny finale, Lloyd fights a gigantic black man. To knock him out once and for all, Harold shoves his hand in one of those giant conch shells and clubs the guy on the head several times in a row. OUCH! 7/10.

Welcome Danger was Harold Lloyd's first talkie, and the transition was not an easy one. Well, easier compared to those of Keaton and Chaplin, but Lloyd's silent pratfalls are poorly paced for a soundie and the film is desperately overlong. This is best reserved for hardcore Lloydites--beginners are advised to check out his mid to late twenties silents before investigating his talkies, of which this is the weakest.

This film was started as a silent and finished as a sound film. One would expect, then, to see some classic Lloyd "silent" comedy sequences, but this is a very disappointing and largely unfunny film. Lloyd's hallmark was always fresh, original, well-worked-out visual gags, but the poorly timed shenanigans here often remind one of something below the Three Stooges: the Bowery Boys, maybe. In virtually every other Lloyd film, regardless of whether he was shy, cocky, a success or a bumbler, his character was always inventive, thinking up ingenious solutions to the problems he found himself in. In this film, much of the humor is based on his simple stupidity. There are endless really primitive early action gags: one character gets the bad guys to chase him while the another stands behind a large crate and bats them on the head as they go by; a character takes a swing with a club to hit someone in front of him and accidentally hits someone creeping up behind him; a friend puts his hand on Lloyd's shoulder so he won't get lost in the dark, but when Lloyd gets back into the light the hand on his shoulder is that of a foe. These and other familiar lightweight gags abound, and the Lloyd's imaginative building of original gags is nowhere to be seen. In addition, nearly identical weak gags are sometimes repeated several times in a row. The bumbling around in a chinatown basement just seems interminable.

What happened? Lloyd's films before and after this one are all classics of top-notch comedy. This is a lapse that's unique in Lloyd's career.

As you might have read here, this movie bridges silents and sound, having been shot without sound, and reshot when sound arrived -- and it appears that little of the silent material was used. There are silent-style titles between scenes, but basically we're watching an early sound film.

Sadly, like many early sound films, it's bogged down by the clumsy technology. The camera is static and actionless... in a Harold Lloyd movie! Harold has few action scenes, or even moments, for most of the film. Meanwhile, his character, speaking for the first time, turns out to be a smart-aleck, not at all like his sympathetic silent persona. Add to that the many moments when he bops somebody on the head or kicks them in the pants, which in sound comes off as painful more than comic. And the fact that he keeps casually destroying other people's property with no motivation makes him come off as, well, kind of a jerk.

Sound quality is not bad for the primitive era, but many scenes are obviously redubbed. And the dialogue! It's inane, which is bad enough. But worse, it's painfully slow, mostly overpronounced in projected, stage-actory voices. As a result, the film drags on at an adagio pace for just short of two hours. Way too long for any comedy.

And to read, again here, that it was previewed at THREE HOURS, tells me that this must have been one of the classic ill-fated Hollywood productions.

And yet... There are some real treats here. Edgar Kennedy is great as the irascible desk sergeant. He's on screen for a long time, but unbilled. Meanwhile, prominent billing goes to Charles Middleton as the weaselly John Thorne. This pleased me because four years later, Middleton and Kennedy both appeared (not together) in one of the one or two greatest comedies ever made, Duck Soup.

In Duck Soup, Kennedy has a series of great scenes -- as the lemonade salesman with Harpo, followed by Harpo, Chico, and the hat-and-leg-swapping routine. And when Freedonia goes to war, he gets to sit on Harpo in the bath.

Meanwhile, Charles Middleton, third-billed here, has merely a bit in Duck Soup, as the prosecutor at Chicolini's trial, playing straight man to Chico and Groucho. Short, but like every moment of Duck Soup, sublime.

Out of respect to the greatness of Harold Lloyd, I can't give this less than a five. But no more, either. It's for diehards & completists only. I'm one myself, but this is a long, hard slog.