TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

classicsoncall I've only seen one other work by Harold Lloyd and that was a short. "Safety Last!" proves that he was able to hold his own in company with Chaplin and Keaton, at least in the creativity he demonstrated by providing all the clever sight gags employed in this film. It starts right with the opening scene with that 'noose' ominously swinging in a background that calls to mind a prison scene, but then it dissolves into something entirely different. I also got a kick out of the 'hanging coat' routine by Lloyd and roommate Billy (Bill Strother) when the landlady came calling. With films going all the way back to the Twenties, it's tough not to marvel at what things cost a century ago. How about that overdue rent of fourteen dollars after two weeks! Or The Boy's fifteen bucks for six days pay at the DeVore Department Store. That kind of puts a businessman's lunch for fifty cents into perspective when you think about it.Ordinarily, pratfalls and slapstick don't appeal to me, but when you go this far back in time and see some of the origins of comedy, it can be very entertaining. And when you get to the building climbing scenes and the daring swings twelve floors above the pavement, you begin to admire how film makers pulled off stunts like that without the benefit of CGI. Obviously camera tricks were involved in some manner, but a lot of it makes you wonder 'How did they do that'? Maybe they all used some of that Johnson's Nerve Tonic from the Acme Drug Company.It's kind of uncanny how movie goers still thrill to the antics of someone defying gravity and other various laws of nature like the ones employed by Harold Lloyd in this picture. Just think about the clock swing and the multiple one handed grabs he made on the ledge of the high rise. The movie I saw just before this one was this year's "Tomb Raider" with Alicia Vikander in the title role, and she simulated all those same kinds of thrills in an appropriately more dangerous twenty first century setting. With all the advances in film making and technology, it seems like the folks who make movies today always go back to the industry's roots.

Bill Slocum It's not Harold Lloyd's best film, nor my personal favorite, nor his snappiest, warmest, or funniest film (different ones, all), but "Safety Last" is the sky's-the-limit icon for Harold Lloyd. You know the shot; now see where it came from.But first, you have to sit through a long introductory section that is by turns inventive and contrived, a taffy pull which drags even as it offers up some inventive gags. Comedy is hard, even sometimes for the audience. But what a payoff.The story is simple: Harold works at a department store and wants to impress his fiancée (Mildred Davis) by buying her fancy things he can't afford as a sign of imaginary wealth. "She's just got to believe that I'm successful – until I am." His campaign works too well: Mildred's mother sends her daughter to snap up Harold before another woman can.I find Mildred Davis the weak link in this film. She plays a thin character, rather unlikable in the way she fixates on status and relishes Harold ordering people around. Another actress might have played her as an amusing gold-digger, or else a zany flapper with suspicions about Harold's game. Davis tended to stick with sweet and simple, and it feels wrong here.There's also the contrivances, another frequent Lloyd qualm of mine. The opening shot is one of those false opens Harold liked to do, in this case a train station set up to look like a gallows. An overhead mail hook resembles a noose and Mildred's father is a minister, so there's a momentary disassociation, except it's the first scene, so it's forgettable immediately. So is a bit where Harold gets stuck in a laundry truck driven by a deaf driver, making him late for work.But amid the whiffs there are hits, like a scene in a crowded trolley and another about dodging a landlady. As the film moves along, it gets much better.To appreciate "Safety Last," I had to realize from the DVD commentary that the film was constructed in reverse. Lloyd and his team (including writer-directors Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor) had their ending all set, and shot it first: Harold on top of that building, hanging on for dear life. The trick for them was figuring out how he gets up there.When I thought of "Safety Last" that way, the contrivances and gags became much more clever and enjoyable, because they are serving a larger end without my realizing it. Why would Harold go up the 12- story Bolton Building? To draw a crowd and impress his girl. Why does he do it himself, when his roommate (Bill Strother) is a high- rise climber? Because Bill is being chased by a cop. Why is Bill being chased by a cop? You get the picture.A real joy of "Safety Last" is seeing members of Lloyd's stock company show up, including Noah Young as the cop, Charles Stevenson and Anna Townsend from "Grandma's Boy" as an ambulance attendant and a customer, and even Roy Brooks, a fixture of many Lloyd shorts, leaning out a window."That's the best one you pulled yet!" Brooks tells Lloyd as he's clinging from the ledge. Is this a call-back to "Never Weaken," a short made two years before where Brooks played Lloyd's pal while Harold climbed another high-rise chasing after Mildred? I can see Harold dotting the i there, even as he also lets his buddy give "Safety Last" its first and most enduring review.Funny how some people talk about Lloyd's genius but then almost sheepishly admit he wasn't quite risking his neck on that building like he appears to, instead of realizing that makes him even more of a genius.

Anthony Mora I believe in magic, if anything in this cold, cruel world can make that happen it's the movies.Known simply as, The Boy, the story goes... A small town store clerk goes to the big city to make it big, set the foundation for a great life for him and his soon-to-be-wife. While there, he gets a depressing job as a customer service associate at a department store. An opportunity arises though, when the general manager of the store offers $1000 to anyone who can come up with an idea to attract more business. So, our Boy thinks up of a spectacle where some poor fool has to scale the face of a building with no climbing gear. This was my first venture into the silent film era, I know right?! Before this, I've only heard of or seen clips of classic films like this. Hearing that this was a great introduction into this era of film, I gladly decided to watch Safety Last!, and wow was I astonished. It takes talent to do great comedy, but this is a 1920's silent comedy. This movie has to rely heavily on physical comedy and imagery to pull off it's comedic moments. There are moments of script and dialog and some of those moments actually did get a chuckle out of me, however it's the physical comedy of the actors in this movie that make this movie a classic.You gotta respect the performances in this movie, Harold Loyd is unprecedented in his work. The building climb surprised me, I was actually flinching at every slip and misstep. That's something special, the movie is almost a century old and I was more thrilled in it's hour long run time than in a hundred thrillers released in the last decade. It's almost hypnotic, the way Mr. Loyd would dance near the edge, his toes barely inching over the skyscraper with the hundred spectators below. Mildred Pierce is also in the movie as, The Girl, hey how convenient. Her character, is grievously the only negative of this movie. I understood her small town character and that she really wants to be with her future husband, but she really came of as annoying to me. "No you can't press the intercom button! Now go wait in the hotel before hubby get's fired." Yeah, that could have helped avoid a LOT of trouble for Mr. Boy. Yet, I can't gripe too much, because it's her annoyance that furthers the story.I loved this little movie, even just calling it little seems like an insult. This is an amazing achievement and deserves all the praise and acknowledgment it's received over the decades. Undoubtedly, I credit this fine motion picture as the gateway to my viewing of other classic silent films.

cricket crockett " . . . soon as I ditch this cop." So yells Bill Strother (playing "The Pal") to Harold Lloyd (in the role of "The Boy") amid the latter's precarious exploration of the OUTSIDE facade of a Los Angeles high-rise during a publicity stunt gone awry. At the height of the "Age of Ballyhoo," during which one could become famous by merely sitting atop a flagpole for a few weeks, a chain of events have forced The Boy to promote his experienced wall-climbing friend in a PR event which will set him up for marriage to "The Girl" (Lloyd's eventual real-life wife, Mildred Davis). The mishaps which have endangered The Boy's future naturally continue, compelling him to make his own dare-devil debut before a throng of thousands. At a time when Mount Everest was as yet unconquered, it certainly is refreshing to see a man "win" a woman through what is arguably a skill and certainly a brave act (as opposed to what Dustin Hoffman's character does at the end of THE GRADUATE, cravenly "stealing" another man's bride from the altar).