Hot Water has got to be one of the weakest Harold Lloyd comedies I've seen. It's one of his earliest (or even first – I'm not sure) feature length films, running at around one hour. Under normal circumstances it's perhaps understandable that someone used to filming in a two-reel format might struggle to come up with consistently funny material over a period three times as long, but the thing is that Lloyd was nervous about making features even though he knew he had to if he was to keep pace with Chaplin and Keaton. So he sensibly decided to string three 20-minute vignettes together so that, if they failed as a feature, each could be released individually. Which means what we actually have here, I suppose, are not one but three of Lloyd's weakest pictures in one.
The three segments of the film are easy to identify. The first sees newly-married Harold picking up a list of shopping on his way home from work, and also becoming the 'lucky' winner of a live turkey which he struggles to carry home. The middle section has Harold and his wife enjoying a ride in their new car with his mother-in-law and a couple of other family members. This section is by far the strongest of the three, and does manage to raise some laughs. In the third segment, Harold, on the advice of a neighbour, downs a bottle of Dutch courage to give him the nerve to tell his wife that her mother must stop coming around so often. He bottles it when he hears the mother explaining to her daughter how she would make her divorce him immediately if she ever caught him drunk. Through a tortuous (but quite clever) sequence of events, Harold mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law and believes he is the subject of a police hunt. This third section is almost excruciatingly laboured when compared to Lloyd's usual standards, with barely a laugh throughout its 20-minute running time.
The three segments of the film are easy to identify. The first sees newly-married Harold picking up a list of shopping on his way home from work, and also becoming the 'lucky' winner of a live turkey which he struggles to carry home. The middle section has Harold and his wife enjoying a ride in their new car with his mother-in-law and a couple of other family members. This section is by far the strongest of the three, and does manage to raise some laughs. In the third segment, Harold, on the advice of a neighbour, downs a bottle of Dutch courage to give him the nerve to tell his wife that her mother must stop coming around so often. He bottles it when he hears the mother explaining to her daughter how she would make her divorce him immediately if she ever caught him drunk. Through a tortuous (but quite clever) sequence of events, Harold mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law and believes he is the subject of a police hunt. This third section is almost excruciatingly laboured when compared to Lloyd's usual standards, with barely a laugh throughout its 20-minute running time.