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Harold Lloyd's last Silent effort is also one of his best vehicles: as ever, production values transcend its simple, comedic nature - the film is particularly relevant as a time-capsule for its view of 1920s New York City - while the narrative itself is filled with enough engaging subplots to please just about everybody - Harold's failure to keep a job for long (we see him, hilariously, as a soda-jerk and a cab driver), his passion for baseball (replacing the game of football celebrated in Lloyd's earlier THE FRESHMAN [1925] and even featuring a cameo by one of its legendary exponents, Babe Ruth, as himself), not to mention an outing with his girl (Ann Christy - okay, if not quite in the same league as regulars Bebe Daniels, Mildred Davis and Jobyna Ralston) at Coney Island.

The main plot, however, concerns a gang of big-city crooks intent on buying out Christy's grandfather (who owns the last operating horse-drawn cart in town); this eventually results in two wonderful set-pieces: the lengthy brawl between the villains and the team Lloyd rallies to resist them, a bunch of mangled but enthusiastic Civil War veterans, and the exhilarating final chase in which Harold ultimately makes good by bringing in the horse-cart on time against all odds - a tour-de-force in the style of Lloyd's climaxes for both GIRL SHY (1924) and FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE (1926). Incidentally, the ousting of an old-fashioned means of transport was also the theme of one of Ealing Studios' classic British comedies, THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953), not to mention one of Luis Bunuel's Mexican films, ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR (1954).

Tragically, director Ted Wilde - who had also guided Lloyd through his finest movie ever, THE KID BROTHER (1927) - died of a stroke at the young age of 36 the year after he made SPEEDY but not before receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Direction of a Comedy Picture, the only time an award of this sort was handed out by the Academy.

For a number of people, this is their Harold Lloyd film, especially if they are from New York City. I can understand that, as it's a funny movie and has great shots of what it looked like in NYC in 1927. (The film was released in 1928). It also is famous for having a 5-minute guest appearance by Babe Ruth.

My vote still goes to "The Freshman," as Lloyd's best but that's all subjective. This is a solid entry and if nothing, else it's a great showcase to see what The Big Apple looked like 80 years ago.

This gets off to good start, too, unlike a number of silent comedies. Harold's ice- cream parlor antics, as a soda jerk, are a lot of fun to watch. I loved the way he signaled his co-workers on how his beloved home team, the Yankees, were doing inning-by-inning. After Harold loses that job, he winds up driving a cab and then, at the end trying to help his girlfriend's father. The elderly man drives the last horse-trolley in the city and is being threatened by someone who wants to buy him out, and Harold comes to the rescue with a dramatic race to beat the clock in the final hectic 15 minutes of the film.

While he was driving the cab, he gets the famous Ruth as one of his customers and he's so excited he almost cracks up the cab and Ruth goes crazy in the back seat. It's a funny scene.

Also tied in with the film is a nice, long scene with Lloyd and his girl (Ann Christy) having a wild day at Coney Island. That, too, was fun and interesting to see. In all, a fun movie and a chance to see Lloyd finish up his great silent career, before films changed to "talkies."

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.

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.

The last Harold Lloyd silent comedy, "Speedy" is a yuk-filled feature boasting some impressive thrill scenes and Jazz Age Manhattan ambiance. If not as satisfying as some earlier Lloyd silents, it manages to showcase just why Lloyd was the most popular of the big three silent clowns.

Harold plays the title character, who may have gotten his name from undiagnosed ADD. Speedy flits from job to job while he dreams of baseball and his girl Jane (Ann Christy). Jane wants to marry Speedy, but first there's the business of her grandfather's horse-drawn trolley, which a greedy railway magnate wants to put out of business any way he can.

As other commenters here point out, this is less a unified film than a sequence of four shorts stitched together as follows: 1. Harold the soda jerk. 2. Harold and Jane at Coney Island. 3. Harold the taxi driver. 4. Harold saves Pop's trolley. The only serious concession to "Speedy's" feature length is that some business of short #4 is introduced between shorts #1 and #2.

Add to that the hit-or-miss gagginess of much of the film, and what you wind up with is less satisfying than Lloyd classics like "The Freshman" or "The Kid Brother." Even early Lloyd features like "Grandma's Boy" or "Dr. Jack" had loftier goals than the laugh-driven "Speedy". Yet "Speedy" is funny most of the time, and does work in some other ways, too.

Though I'm not a Yankees fan, I'm a sucker with any movie that features Babe Ruth. Here, in a cameo, he does excellent work as a passenger afraid for his life getting a mad cab ride from the star-struck Speedy.

"Even when you strike out, you miss 'em close," Speedy enthuses, eyes on Babe and not the road.

"I don't miss 'em half as close as you do!" Babe yells back.

It's cool just seeing these two icons share the screen, and if you watch just before the 53rd minute, you'll see a third icon, Lou Gehrig, slip into the background during a Harold-Babe two-shot and proceed to stick his tongue out at the camera!

As fun as moments like that are, "Speedy" doesn't add up to the sum of its parts until the final third, when we resume the story of Pop's horse-drawn trolley. There we get a fitting capper to Lloyd's silent-clown career, with a hilarious street battle between young toughs and old coots fought with flypaper, horseshoes, and a pegleg, among other implements. Then there's the final trolley ride, which employs a horrific-looking real accident to create some tension over the question of whether Harold will save the day.

Like many note, "Speedy" is as captivating for what you see in the background. So much of it was shot for real in Manhattan, and even when there's no comically rude Hall-of-Fame first basemen in sight, there's a lot of energy and activity on view, whether its tugboats on the Hudson, taxis on Times Square, or street urchins ingenuously looking at the camera wondering what's up. The Coney Island sequence is the most labored part of the film for me, but it's still not only inventively played out but especially edifying for those of us who wonder what amusement parks were like before the age of the steel roller-coaster or more stringent safety regulations.

Lloyd and director Ted Wilde knew what the audience wanted, and deliver it here with a cherry on top. If not quite as on the money after more than 80 years, "Speedy" is still well worth watching for fans of Lloyd and silent comedy.