La Chasse au renard

Harold Loyd is pretty funny, and a good physical comic. Among Those Present deals with the contrast between high society and the rest of us. It seems to have been a more popular theme during the 1920s than it is now. (Cf., The Great Gatsby.) Not that we don't have our share of contemporary explorations of the same issue, as in Trading Places, but now the contrast seems to be more about wealth and less about "class" in the old fashioned sense.

The first half of Among Those Present has Loyd imitating a British aristocrat, telling ridiculous stories about "the hunt" to an assembly of awed guests at a tony party, and trying to ride a horse that others refer to as a "brute." (The subsequent ride is more imaginative than the similar one in Auntie Mame.) In the second half, Loyd has lost his trousers escaping from a bull through a barbed wire fence but doesn't realize it. This is the most outlandishly amusing part of the film. No matter how Loyd tries to cover up the fact that he is pantsless, the attempt fails. It's like Laurel and Hardy trying to change trousers after their escape from prison. Probably the single funniest moment in the movie is when Loyd, still in his skivvies, finds himself hopping froglike past a couple of dignified ladies on a bench. (I won't explain what led up to this.)

I laughed out loud a few times even though I wasn't in a particularly good mood while watching it. I mean, my brain hadn't been chemically altered or anything. It's quite amusing.

Harold Lloyd pretends to be a hoity-toity Englishman among a bunch of aristocrats in this really funny short comedy.

Lloyd's comedies were always funny in direct proportion to the amount of physical slapstick he built into them, and this one has loads to spare. Most notable is an extended gag that finds Lloyd without pants, freaking out every proper English lady he comes across while trying to save his ass from being bitten off by a grumpy dog. All of this craziness is of course for a girl (what other reason could there possibly be?) and all ends happily enough.

Grade: A-

Poor Neil Doyle who switched off after half the film; he missed the best part of the movie - Lloyd with no trousers. How society has changed since the days when a man with bare legs was enough to send women into a faint (I write as I sit on the beach in just a pair of trunks!).

The scene the lion also comic gold. Was it Woody who reprised this scene with an octopus?

Not one of Lloyd's best but still enough great moments to make it worthwhile (although it does come as a shock when Lloyd's character is given the name O'Reilly at the end!).

This isn't one of Harold Lloyd's better films, it has to be said. He was at his best when delivering physical thrills and humour at breakneck speed, but there's precious little of it here. That's not to say Lloyd's humour couldn't be as effective when it was delivered at a more low-key level, but he needed to mix it up a little with his more dangerous stunts in order to get the cocktail right. Here he plays a bell boy who dreams of being a playboy, and gets the opportunity when he's offered the chance to pose as a wealthy aristocrat at a swanky social gathering. Unknown to Harold, the guy and his girlfriend who invited him are planning to scam the hostess out of her millions. The woman just happens to be the mother of Mildred Davis – an ever-present fixture in Lloyd's movies in those days – so naturally everything turns out alright in the end.

The second half of the film sees Harold losing his pants as he encounters a small zoo-load of animals: Skunks, snakes, bulls, goats, geese and dogs all try to take a bite out of our hero, and it's this part of the film that delivers the bulk of the laughs and prevents the film from being a complete flop.

Harold Lloyd is a common bellhop at a ritzy Hotel, but he's good at impersonating the rich snobs who frequent the establishment. That talent gets him a chance to wear "glad rags" and mingle with the "swells," pretending to be a famous hunter. He's invited to this upper crust party and fox hunt. The real famous hunter didn't look suitable so a man who was assigned the job of asking the hunter to come to the party, invites Lloyd instead, telling him this is his chance to have some fun. Harold is okay with that. The invitee is really some "scumbag," as one reviewer here puts it, and is only interested in getting the daughter of the rich people to marry him so he can gain some money.

Anyway, after tasting the accidentally-spiked punch, gets hammered and tells a bunch of wild tales at the party. The more drinks he has, the better the stories. Some are pretty funny.

He's then asked to ride "Dynamite," the un-ridable horse, in the hunt. Slapstick then takes over for the rest of the movie as Harold attempts to ride the horse, then winds up being chased by a ram and a dog, loses his pants and tries to hide from everyone, on and on. Yes, a lot of these films didn't have much of a story, just a vehicle for the comedian to show us his talents. That's okay; that's what we like or we wouldn't watch these Lloyd or Buster Keaton and others' short films.

This film was so-so, to be honest. Nothing great, but not bad, either. The title cards in here were with cute drawings that were funny and a bit sarcastic were as good as the film.