Diagonaldi Very well executed

Steineded How sad is this?

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

cmayerle-41064 Sturges made so many great films. This one falls somewhat short of his best, but is still entertaining in its own right. I recommend d_fienberg's review because it is very insightful. Briefly, this is a standard Preston Sturges plot with one of the icons of early Hollywood.Lloyd was much better than I was expecting (maybe I was thinking of Norma Desmond's assessment of silent film stars, "We didn't need dialog! We had faces," or the difficult transition depicted in Singing in the Rain). Lloyd had terrific facial expressions and maintained his impeccable physical comedy from his earlier days; some of the early stars who did their own stunts were pretty beaten up in their later years. However, he also executed his dialog like a true comedian.It's too bad that this film wasn't commercially successful because the copies are in poor shape. The audio is pretty good, though.

Bill Slocum {This review is for the 89-minute version.}Harold Lloyd revisiting one of his silent-comedy classics with the help of one of the sound era's most revered directors reads like a match made in heaven. The reality is much more earth-bound.Harold Diddlebock (Lloyd) is first seen in a flashback to his college days, a heroic escapade lifted entirely from the 1925 Lloyd comedy "The Freshman." Two decades later, the game-winning student has become an office drone, so much so his boss fires him for lack of initiative. Drowning his sorrows in strong drink for the first time, Diddlebock wakes up to discover he is wearing a loud checkered suit and lost all memory of the previous day.What we know, and he doesn't, is that his dismissal has awoken a ferocious beast inside him: "A man works all his life in a glass factory, well, one day he feels like picking up a hammer."This seems a fantastic set-up for a Walter-Mitty-style comedy; add to it the legendary Preston Sturges as writer-director, bringing along his team of wisecracking supporting players, and what's not to like?Apart from two or three scenes, pretty much everything."Diddlebock" spends too much time replaying "The Freshman," with insert shots of Diddlebock's future boss overreacting to every play on screen. Then we fast-forward to the then-present, in which the boss drops the boom on middle-aged Harold. Sturges and Lloyd play this very real, with only some black humor for levity.This actually kind of works, as it effectively sets up Harold's rebellion. Coaxed into a bar by Sturges regular Jimmy Conlin, he tells bartender Edgar Kennedy that this drink will be a first-time experience."You arouse the artist in me," the bartender murmurs, inventing a concoction he calls the "Diddlebock."Then Harold's off to the races, literally, putting all his severance money on a pair of longshot horses. The sequence is sustained nuttiness, up there with the best Sturges comedies.But the second half, woof, what a stinker! You get the feeling either Sturges never developed his story, or else lost it in the editing room. Instead of a development of the Diddlebock character, Sturges has Lloyd walk around with a lion and a ten-gallon hat, something about impressing bankers to invest in a circus idea, while Conlin trails after him screaming "Mr. Diddlebock!" over and over.It's such a shame because the film had a chance of being so much better. Sturges revisits old themes, sending up capitalism especially with the notion of Diddlebock's midlife crisis being brought on by corporate greed. Lloyd shows he had skills as an actor, developing pathos and charm (the latter especially in a sequence with Frances Ramsden playing the youngest of seven sisters with whom Harold has successively, unsuccessfully fallen in love).But all that good groundwork comes to naught as Sturges sticks Lloyd on a building to revisit past glories, dangling from a lion's leash with Conlin overacting by his side. This plays so hollow it makes one long for when he was just a fired office drone. Diddlebock finds success, improbably enough; more understandable is the sad fact neither Sturges nor Lloyd worked much after this half-baked partnership bombed.

Jay Raskin Hearing that this film was a disaster at the time of its release, I was not expecting much from it. I was surprised that it was a delightful 90 minutes with a marvelous farewell performance by Lloyd that showed him at top of his game.I haven't seen any other talking films by Lloyd, so I only have his silent films to compare this with. I thought this was as good as most of the silents I have seen. The silents generally contain a few slow but amusing exposition parts mixed with great 10 minute sequences of 30 or 40 memorable gags. That is pretty much what you get here. The football beginning scene, the drinking scene and the lion on the ledge scene are the great sequences. The lion on the ledge scene is as good and funny as anything in Lloyd's silents.Lloyd did this film when he was 55. While Keaton did lots of amusing and good stuff after age 40, nothing came close to this silents. Chaplin also faded after 50. "The Great Dictator," which he did at age 50 was his last great film. "Monsieur Verdoux," "Limelight" and "A King in New York" are good films, but aren't Chaplin at his best. Lloyd looks fit and youthful here and we watch him intensely in every scene without thinking about any of his earlier films.Preston Sturges knows how to make even the smallest character actor shine and that is his contribution here. The character actors like Margaret Hamilton or Edgar Kennedy might only get six or seven minutes of screen time but they are fresh and delightful, not relying on their past work, but creating new and hilarious characters.The bit about Lloyd falling in love with seven sisters who all worked in his office is pure Sturges. Some people are going to find it silly rather than funny, but I laughed.I understand that it was not released for two years and then flopped. As often happens, the quality of a work is not necessarily related to its appreciation in its first showing. Sixty years later, it is easier to see it as an odd and charming little masterpiece.

gmw-5 Calling this film brilliant isn't strong enough. The Dylan lyric "to laugh and cry in a single sound" fits because at the end of the film if your heartstrings are not being strummed then you may not be living.Lloyd is an everyman squashed by life who encounters a bartender and asks for his first drink, ever. The bartender rises to the challenge and... well, Lloyd spends part of the film piecing together what he did after consuming it... I'm telling you, this film is BRILLIANT. The way it's shot, the acting, the brilliant casting, the writing all work together in a way that has no equal in cinema; the silent version of "The Thief of Baghdad" comes to mind for its sense of unbridled fun and its soaring spirit. This is so much more than a comedy, at some point the movie glides past that label and really grabs the brass ring, you know what I mean? Truly brilliant, highest possible recommendation.