A rotta di collo

I really wasn't that familiar with Harold Lloyd until I saw this silent. I wasn't going to watch it at first, but I got immersed in it almost immediately! What glorious and successful use of slapstick! I'm not even into slapstick that much, but this one had me "rolling in the aisles," or should I say my living room chair.

Mr. Lloyd had a knack of making fun of himself, which to me is the essence of anything comical. I guess that's why I don't watch anything too recent, since so much comedy these days is either at somebody else's expense, or just plain stupid. Here we have the hero, Lloyd, trying to do something nice for someone else, while having absolute perseverance throughout impossible trials and tribulations. That makes it even better. No violence, thank goodness!

Mr. Lloyd was a genius, and he ranks with Buster Keaton in bringing timeless laughs.

A delightful Harold Lloyd piece in which, in a nice change of pace, his character is a self-assured, confident young man living in New York during the roaring twenties, who loves baseball as much as he loves his girlfriend. Trouble is afoot however, when business tycoons try to buyout his father-in-law's lone horse and buggy track for their development. Things turn unlawful when goons are hired to try and thwart the buggy's run, which must be made at least once every 24 hours, or Pop can lose his license.

Everything plays out in the traditional Lloyd way, with wonderful gags and set pieces, but the biggest treat of all is the roughly twenty minute escape Lloyd takes with his girl to Coney Island. Wonderfully shot, it is truly a pleasure to see Coney Island in it's hey day. As well, Babe Ruth does a nice turn playing himself.

A must see.

Pop Dillon operates the last horse-drawn trolley in New York. His loving granddaughter Jane has boyfriend Harold 'Speedy' Swift (Harold Lloyd) who is constantly changing jobs and dreams of being a baseball player. A railroad is trying to buy Pop's track. Pop negotiates a price but Speedy torpedoes the negotiations when he reads that the big railroads need Pop's run. Speedy takes Jane to Coney Island. He next gets a new job as a taxi cab driver. It goes badly until he picks up Babe Ruth. At Yankee Stadium, he overhears a man scheming to steal Pop's track by stopping the run for 24 hours.

This is famed silent era star Harold Lloyd's final silent movie. It's great to see Coney Island at its heights and the old rides. Babe Ruth makes a solid cameo. Harold Lloyd driving the Babe around is harrowing and kinda infuriating. It actually made me not like Speedy as much. There is quite a bit of action. I love the old Coney Island rides. The car chases are sometimes interesting with one shocking crash. It looks like it really hurted. The plot rambles around a bit. This has some fun and it's an easy watch.

SPEEDY might not be as tight as his other masterpieces- it's a bit episodic, yet those scenes on Coney Island are lovely all the same, and the way they set up a little home inside the truck is poetic. This is the last silent of Lloyd, and it reflects the helplessness towards progression and the nostalgia of the good old past, which is the essence of what makes this film so wonderfully rich and graceful. That attempt of saving the last horse-drawn tram as goal(instead of personal achievement), and especially the help from the civil war veterans and on-lookers(instead of himself as an all-able hero) is atypical of Lloyd, but makes this film warmer, special, and very lovely.

Besides providing plenty of entertainment from Harold Lloyd and the rest of the cast, this silent comedy classic is also quite enjoyable as a time capsule from 1920s New York, with wonderful footage of Coney Island and other sights, plus the amusing appearance by Babe Ruth. Even more so than most movies of its era, it gives you a very good feel for its time and place.

The plot has Lloyd, as perpetual job-seeker and job-loser "Speedy", trying to save the city's last horse-drawn streetcar, which is driven by the father of his girlfriend. The David-vs.-Goliath conflict gives Lloyd a lot to work with, and it is used to good effect both for gags and for character development. There are a number of good sequences, including a hilarious and detailed street donnybrook between the transport company's hired goons and Lloyd's ragtag neighborhood stalwarts.

The lengthy digressions from the main story also work very well. The taxicab sequence with Ruth is probably the best-remembered, and there is also a delightful sequence at Coney Island's Luna Park. Ann Christy and Lloyd work together well, and they make an especially pleasant and sympathetic couple in this sequence.

"Speedy" is a good showcase for Lloyd, since it combines action sequences that advance the story with other sequences that simply entertain and give you a feel for the characters. Overall, it has quite a lot to recommend it.