Count Your Change

In many ways, this Hal Roach production looks like an earlier Sennett comedy. This is because Sennett's early films had barely any script at all and actors were often told to just wing it or act funny...with usually fair to middling results at best. There just isn't much in the way of plot or context in this one.

Sub Pollard spends the short playing a drunk. Harold Lloyd is a homeless guy who is hungry...but who is also a jerk. First, he steals a hotdog and that is then stolen by a dog...and Lloyd gives chase for it. Second, he arrives at a hotel or apartment and you have no idea what he's doing or why...and it's even more confusing and less funny when he and Snub literally start bouncing off the walls. In the end, Lloyd finds a girl (Bebe Daniels) and then starts punching everyone...and I have no idea why.

Overall, this film lacks charm, comedy and a reason for existing. What a HUGE difference between stuff like "Count Your Change" and Lloyd's brilliant films made just a few years later.

This is one of forty shorts that Harold Lloyd made in 1919. It's fast, it's furious, and it has a lovely gag sequence in which Harold tries to steal a sausage, loses it to a dog and.... well, it's very funny. Too fast and furious to make much sense, but a lot of fun.