{This review is for the 89-minute version.}
Harold Lloyd revisiting one of his silent-comedy classics with the help of one of the sound era's most revered directors reads like a match made in heaven. The reality is much more earth-bound.
Harold Diddlebock (Lloyd) is first seen in a flashback to his college days, a heroic escapade lifted entirely from the 1925 Lloyd comedy "The Freshman." Two decades later, the game-winning student has become an office drone, so much so his boss fires him for lack of initiative. Drowning his sorrows in strong drink for the first time, Diddlebock wakes up to discover he is wearing a loud checkered suit and lost all memory of the previous day.
What we know, and he doesn't, is that his dismissal has awoken a ferocious beast inside him: "A man works all his life in a glass factory, well, one day he feels like picking up a hammer."
This seems a fantastic set-up for a Walter-Mitty-style comedy; add to it the legendary Preston Sturges as writer-director, bringing along his team of wisecracking supporting players, and what's not to like?
Apart from two or three scenes, pretty much everything.
"Diddlebock" spends too much time replaying "The Freshman," with insert shots of Diddlebock's future boss overreacting to every play on screen. Then we fast-forward to the then-present, in which the boss drops the boom on middle-aged Harold. Sturges and Lloyd play this very real, with only some black humor for levity.
This actually kind of works, as it effectively sets up Harold's rebellion. Coaxed into a bar by Sturges regular Jimmy Conlin, he tells bartender Edgar Kennedy that this drink will be a first-time experience.
"You arouse the artist in me," the bartender murmurs, inventing a concoction he calls the "Diddlebock."
Then Harold's off to the races, literally, putting all his severance money on a pair of longshot horses. The sequence is sustained nuttiness, up there with the best Sturges comedies.
But the second half, woof, what a stinker! You get the feeling either Sturges never developed his story, or else lost it in the editing room. Instead of a development of the Diddlebock character, Sturges has Lloyd walk around with a lion and a ten-gallon hat, something about impressing bankers to invest in a circus idea, while Conlin trails after him screaming "Mr. Diddlebock!" over and over.
It's such a shame because the film had a chance of being so much better. Sturges revisits old themes, sending up capitalism especially with the notion of Diddlebock's midlife crisis being brought on by corporate greed. Lloyd shows he had skills as an actor, developing pathos and charm (the latter especially in a sequence with Frances Ramsden playing the youngest of seven sisters with whom Harold has successively, unsuccessfully fallen in love).
But all that good groundwork comes to naught as Sturges sticks Lloyd on a building to revisit past glories, dangling from a lion's leash with Conlin overacting by his side. This plays so hollow it makes one long for when he was just a fired office drone. Diddlebock finds success, improbably enough; more understandable is the sad fact neither Sturges nor Lloyd worked much after this half-baked partnership bombed.
Harold Lloyd revisiting one of his silent-comedy classics with the help of one of the sound era's most revered directors reads like a match made in heaven. The reality is much more earth-bound.
Harold Diddlebock (Lloyd) is first seen in a flashback to his college days, a heroic escapade lifted entirely from the 1925 Lloyd comedy "The Freshman." Two decades later, the game-winning student has become an office drone, so much so his boss fires him for lack of initiative. Drowning his sorrows in strong drink for the first time, Diddlebock wakes up to discover he is wearing a loud checkered suit and lost all memory of the previous day.
What we know, and he doesn't, is that his dismissal has awoken a ferocious beast inside him: "A man works all his life in a glass factory, well, one day he feels like picking up a hammer."
This seems a fantastic set-up for a Walter-Mitty-style comedy; add to it the legendary Preston Sturges as writer-director, bringing along his team of wisecracking supporting players, and what's not to like?
Apart from two or three scenes, pretty much everything.
"Diddlebock" spends too much time replaying "The Freshman," with insert shots of Diddlebock's future boss overreacting to every play on screen. Then we fast-forward to the then-present, in which the boss drops the boom on middle-aged Harold. Sturges and Lloyd play this very real, with only some black humor for levity.
This actually kind of works, as it effectively sets up Harold's rebellion. Coaxed into a bar by Sturges regular Jimmy Conlin, he tells bartender Edgar Kennedy that this drink will be a first-time experience.
"You arouse the artist in me," the bartender murmurs, inventing a concoction he calls the "Diddlebock."
Then Harold's off to the races, literally, putting all his severance money on a pair of longshot horses. The sequence is sustained nuttiness, up there with the best Sturges comedies.
But the second half, woof, what a stinker! You get the feeling either Sturges never developed his story, or else lost it in the editing room. Instead of a development of the Diddlebock character, Sturges has Lloyd walk around with a lion and a ten-gallon hat, something about impressing bankers to invest in a circus idea, while Conlin trails after him screaming "Mr. Diddlebock!" over and over.
It's such a shame because the film had a chance of being so much better. Sturges revisits old themes, sending up capitalism especially with the notion of Diddlebock's midlife crisis being brought on by corporate greed. Lloyd shows he had skills as an actor, developing pathos and charm (the latter especially in a sequence with Frances Ramsden playing the youngest of seven sisters with whom Harold has successively, unsuccessfully fallen in love).
But all that good groundwork comes to naught as Sturges sticks Lloyd on a building to revisit past glories, dangling from a lion's leash with Conlin overacting by his side. This plays so hollow it makes one long for when he was just a fired office drone. Diddlebock finds success, improbably enough; more understandable is the sad fact neither Sturges nor Lloyd worked much after this half-baked partnership bombed.