Grandma's Boy (1922)

4/18/07

Movie: Grandma's Boy (1922)
Setting: unspecified semi-rural, possibly the South (Dabney county); contemporary

Harold Lloyd's first feature length comedy has no great standout gages, yet is generally amusing and representative of his work as a whole. Harold here is his trademark 'glasses character', a 19 year old attempting to woe Mildred Davis. However Lloyd has a competitor in his efforts, a bully played by Charles Stevenson who consistently gets the upper hand, that is until our hero's grandma (Anna Townsen) presents him with a "magic" charm that supposedly helped her late husband become a Civil War Hero (this is depicted in a sort of flashback sequence, with Lloyd playing his own grandfather). In the end LLoyd must capture a feared local vagrant 'the Rolling Stone' (Dick Sutherland) and defeat Charles Stevenson to get the girl. The result, a decent hours worth of entertainment.

Must See: Harold Lloyd's 1923 opus Safety Last, regarded by many as his greatest film, it features his famed free-climbing race up an office tower.