Harry Langdon was a very peculiar genius, with his own odd rhythms and his own odd character. He was, in his day, enormously influential. It was his slow pace, his willingness to let the audience get ahead of his baby-faced naif, that so influenced Stan Laurel that he, too, began to slow his pace, creating the Mr. Laurel all fans of old movies love and cherish.
But that slow pacing calls for an extremely careful balance, and here the edifice topples over, so that when I saw this movie in a theater with a crowd of Langdon fans, I fell asleep.... and there was no laughter to wake me up.
When I awoke, there was Harry in a house dress with a milk man trying to seduce him..... and Harry was playing his bewildered, inert screen self.... and it suddenly occurred to me that if he didn't care, there was no reason I should, so I stood up and walked outside into the sunlight.
Lest you think it is because I simply don't get Langdon, well, I don't think that's the case. It's just that every once in a while something comes along to snap our suspension of disbelief in a work of fiction, and this was one of those times. I can look at the cheap shorts he turned out in the early 1930s and enjoy him playing with a rubber hose. But this feature simply doesn't work. Alas.
But that slow pacing calls for an extremely careful balance, and here the edifice topples over, so that when I saw this movie in a theater with a crowd of Langdon fans, I fell asleep.... and there was no laughter to wake me up.
When I awoke, there was Harry in a house dress with a milk man trying to seduce him..... and Harry was playing his bewildered, inert screen self.... and it suddenly occurred to me that if he didn't care, there was no reason I should, so I stood up and walked outside into the sunlight.
Lest you think it is because I simply don't get Langdon, well, I don't think that's the case. It's just that every once in a while something comes along to snap our suspension of disbelief in a work of fiction, and this was one of those times. I can look at the cheap shorts he turned out in the early 1930s and enjoy him playing with a rubber hose. But this feature simply doesn't work. Alas.