Lupo di mare

It's the Abington Arms, an ultra fashionable summer resort. The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is an idle rich heir to $20 million. He falls for The Girl (Mildred Davis) who is pursued by many suitors. Her steel magnate father demands that he go do something worthwhile like getting a job. He decides to join the Navy.

This is a fun Harold Lloyd film with his classic bespectacled everyman. It doesn't have his building climbing exploits but it does have some slapstick and general physical humor. An extra does some nice magic tricks. It's a fun 45 minutes.

At 46 minutes, it is hard to consider this a feature film, but apparently the distributors did and it launched Lloyd's career as a feature film star. It was released ten months after Chaplin released "The Kid," his first feature. However, both of these films were seven years after Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand's "Tillie's Punctured Romance," which was the first comedy feature, albeit not a very good one.

The movie is in three parts with millionaire Harold lazily announcing he is going to marry Mildred Davis in the first part. Her father demands he get a job and so he joins the Navy. The second part takes place at sea with Harold becoming friends with tough sailor Noah Young. The third part takes place in an Arabian Nights like far Eastern land, where Mildred is vacationing and Harold's ship coincidentally lands.

The first two parts are competent and amusing, but nothing special. It is the last part, where the film leaves reality that the film starts to really surprise and glow, as it foreshadows Douglas Fairbanks "Thief of Bagdad" (1924).

Everything here is well done. It is only in comparison to some of Lloyd's more brilliant sequences that the film suffers. Noah Young is excellent as the Navy tough guy who becomes Lloyd's loyal sidekick.

This film is more for Lloyd and silent film fans. As noted by another reviewer, it doesn't have the brilliant sequences that would make newbies embrace Lloyd as a genius or fall in love with silent film art.

A pretty unremarkable Harold Lloyd comedy that finds our scrappy hero unwittingly signing on with the U.S. Navy in order to impress a girl. You can probably guess the physical and sight gags that go along with life on a Navy vessel, and then a large portion of the latter half of the film finds Harold in an unnamed Arabian country single-handedly fighting hordes of sword-wielding goons in order to rescue his fair love, who's been kidnapped by a wealthy sultan. There isn't a whole lot to remember about this film -- I had to look it up just to remind myself of what the plot was about -- but Harold Lloyd fans know that even his lesser films provide a good deal of entertainment.

Grade: B

Comedian Harold Lloyd was preparing for just another short film when the plot he and his team of writers came up with was sizzling with a wealth of gags. They were in a quandary whether to shelve some brilliant sequences to be within the restraints of their normal short 30-minute film or expand to a longer version. Producer Hal Roach recommended the later. Lloyd went along with his producer's opinion, and made his first feature film, December 1921's "A Sailor-Made Man." It was a decision that forever changed his movie career.

Clocking in at just 46 minutes, Lloyd's feature was a big money-maker at the theaters, cashing in almost half a million dollars on a $77,000 budget. The movie's plot of a rich playboy who is required to get a job before he marries his popular girlfriend could have easily fit into his previously two-reeler structure. But since his character's enrollment into the Navy required an exotic location, Lloyd expanded upon thrills and laughs to a longer motion picture.

This is Harold Lloyd's first "longer" film, going far longer than what was usual at the time (20-28 minutes per movie) but it moves as fast as movies half the length.

I haven't labeled too many of his films "charming," but that might fit here: charming and funny, of course. It has the usual silent-film wild ending that most feature silent comedies had. Instead of some streets, we have a chase through the Rajah's palace (including a pool) with all kinds of slapstick gags in the mix.

Earlier, rich-boy Harold becomes a common Navy sailor and the scenes on the ship, although not laugh-out-loud comedy, are in that charming category as the big bully seaman winds up being Harold's friend and fan.

All in all, without going into the whole story, it's simply a nice movie: nothing spectacular but definitely worth watching.