Girl Shy, starring Harold Lloyd, is from the year 1924. Right now Beta Reading is in full swing, so I'm back to researching the 1920s again. I just watched Girl Shy and can give you a review. I give it 9/10 stars.
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| Courtesy of tcm.com |
The Harold Lloyd films always have a flare for drama in them. Our main character is an underdog and an awkward kid all around. That's what you have to expect in a Harold Lloyd film. We have Harold Meadows working at a tailor shop with a crippling fear of women and a crippling stutter. A whistle will end his stutter for a while, as the film illustrates right from the beginning. He's also writing a book (a serious book in his eyes, comical in others) about women and how to get them to love you. I wouldn't try any of his techniques, solely based on the two chapters we see acted out. That's our main character for you.
Our love interest (the woman) is a rich girl named Mary with a jerk boyfriend she calls a friend - and refused to marry at least 6 times. I guess they were engaged too, so I'm somewhat confused. You see her jerk boyfriend with a woman in town saying "When can I meet your family" (paraphrased), and he brushes her off. Our love interest has a small lap dog that Harold saved and helped her hide on the train. It was a loud lap dog, too, and had no interest in being hidden. It was adorable, probably a pomeranian.
It starts out being cute, then gets dramatic around the last third of the movie. The manuscript he dropped off at the publishing house was rejected - then unrejected and retitled something rather insulting "A boob's Journal". Due to this rejection (he didn't know they'd reconsidered) he self-sabotages his own romance because he thinks he's a loser. I did not enjoy seeing that part. It was heartbreaking. He later gets a 3000 dollar check and the note with it. He's insulted and says they can't have it if they are making fun of it.
Mary, our main lady, almost marries the jerk boyfriend. The day of the marriage the woman from earlier shows up again, only to announce and prove she is the WIFE of the jerk boyfriend. Oof. Harold then goes on a long, long, long scene of hopping and stealing transportation (including a bootlegger's car) to get to the wedding. He crashes it just in time to show her the proof and ask her to marry him (stuttering while doing so). A successful wedding crash saved Mary from dating a cheater and redeemed our main character. Hooray!
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| Courtesy of manchesterinklink.com |
What I Liked
This one was cute, adorable even. I loved the little lap dog incident, which actually had our main character eating a dog biscuit to cover for why Mary had the biscuits at all. They were trying to hand it into the bag that hid the dog because it was yapping. It was silly and adorable. I also loved the two main characters - except for when Harold decides he's worth nothing and tries to throw away a good thing.
This one had all my attention, as opposed to the other Harold Lloyd I watched (The Freshman, 1925). This was more of a rom-com (romantic comedy) than anything. I liked that. You see a lot of jokes and physical humor in these. It takes a special kind of acting to pull all that off. There was nothing I disliked enough to even have a section on what I disliked. Even the long segment of hopping transportation was entertaining.
Overall Thoughts
If you want a cute film that has a rom-com feel, but some dramatic tension, you'll love this. It's wholesome and fun. You get a lot of cute animals thrown in at random, too. I will say you see some bare bottoms (some kids swimming in a river while Harold tries to find a romantic spot to sit with our main lady) for a brief minute. The animals include pet birds, piglets and mother pig, kittens and mother cat, and the lap dog that makes an adorable ruckus through the train. It's worth watching.
As for the book he wrote, our main character was fantasizing and it was hilarious. The Caveman methods are pretty much throwing anything in your way on the ground and being a barbarian (literally smacking someone on the butt with their own shoe). That method was for flappers. The vampire romance was basically indifference. Quite dramatic and not helpful if you really wanted to find love. Those two illustrated scenes are funny. What's also funny is the jerk boyfriend saying "They say the 7th time is lucky. I'm going to try proposing again", only to annoy her and cause her to crash her car into a ditch. One man is writing bad fiction and the other is just an idiot. All the same, Mary chose the right man at the end of the story. Fortunately, his book wasn't published. And fortunately, none of the methods he wrote about were used to romance our main lady.
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