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Special Features
- Includes: The Kid Brother, Bumping Into Broadway, The Freshman, Billy Blazes Esq. with alt. organ score, Dr. Jack, Feet First, Grandma's Boy, Now or Never, High and Dizzy
- Commentary by Leonard Maltin, director Richard Correll, and film historian Richard W. Bann on The Freshman
- Commentary by Harold Lloyd's granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, author Annette D'Agostino Lloyd, and Richard Correll on The Kid Brother
- Production galleries
- Featurette: "Scoring for Comedy"
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The Freshman (1925) presents Lloyd's successful screen persona fully realized: hopeful, plucky, a regular guy with high ambitions. He plays a college plebe whose ridiculous ideas about making himself ingratiating to others (including hilariously inapt jig during a handshake) makes him the laughingstock of the campus. The movie concludes with a justifiably famous football sequence, later excerpted by Preston Sturges for his Lloyd-starring comedy, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The Kid Brother (1927) is Harold as the weak link in the tough Hickory family, while Dr. Jack (1922) casts him as a country doctor whose ordinary ways prove sharper than they seem (his co-star, as in some other films here, is future wife Mildred Davis). In Grandma's Boy (1922) Lloyd plays a small-town fellow who lives with his frisky grandmother; convinced of his own cowardice, he yearns to compete for the hand of a pretty girl. His courtly call to the girl's home is the occasion for uproarious battle with a ridiculous "formal" suit, mothballs, and a litter of kittens attracted by the goose grease on his shoes. There's also a long (and quite funny) flashback to Lloyd's ancestor, tangled in a Civil War fracas.
The short films include Bumping Into Broadway (1919), which gives an early glimpse at Lloyd's athleticism, and Billy Blazes, Esq. (1919), which puts Lloyd in the Old West. The gem is High and Dizzy (1920), a warm-up for his classic Safety Last (on Vol. 1), which has a great sequence with Lloyd tipsily navigating a ledge on a high building. Feet First (1930), Lloyd's second talking picture, has Harold as an upwardly-striving shoe salesman trying to finesse his way up the ladder. Some good shipboard sequences in the middle of this one, but the main drawing card is a throwback: Lloyd re-visiting the Safety Last hanging-from-a-building sequence, but this time working every variation known to slapstick. It's really funny, and shows his physical dexterity to be undiminished (the bit is marred only by the insensitive racial jokes at the expense of actor Willie Best, who is billed under his wince-worthy performing name, Sleep 'n Eat). Commentaries on two films and lots of production stills round out the package, along with a short doc about music for silent slapstick comedy. --Robert Horton
Product Description
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by Leonard Maltin, Rich Correll and film historian Richard Bann on The Freshman Commentary by Harold Lloyd's granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, Author Annette Lloyd and Rich Correll on Kid Brother
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions. **All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery
Customer Reviews
Harold's "Kid Brother" and "The Freshman" are in this volume-2. They are very funny, entertaining, clever, and well worth seeing.
Harold's films have a girl he is trying to win, bullies, chases, and clever humor. The "Kid Brother", in the old west, has the youngest brother outsmarting his bully, older brothers. "The Freshman" is the perils of a freshman college student falling prey to some clever pranks of the upperclassmen.
These silent-films are not movies with just music; they are planned so you understand the action, just by watching, at a good pace. A lost art. I did not care for Harold's later talking-pictures.
Harold was funny, when chased by bullies, as Harold was short, skinny, had straw-hat and glasses, looking unathletic. So convincing, film critics today still believe him frail. However, Harold was very able, he was very quick, nimble, balanced, and had unusually strong, climbing strength; getting him away from those bullies just in time.
Harold's "Safety Last" is his best. (In the other volume-1, or in the 3-volume-set). I recommend volume-1 first, then volume-2, or the 3-volume-set. Volume-3 has "Speedy", which is funny, but not as good as the these others, "Speedy" does show Coney Island amusement park rides in the 1920's, a scene with Babe Ruth, and volume-3 has a 15-minute extra of Harold's palatial estate.
Him being stuck on a scaffolding going up and down a building was hilarious.
We have here an interesting collection of our man's varying personas. The everyman go-getter (Dr. Jack & Feet First) and the geek who overcomes (Grandma's Boy, The Freshamn, and the Kid Brother).
In DR. JACK (with cameos from the Our Gang kids), our hero is a likeable commonsense country doctor who tries to foil the plans of a quack to exploit a rich family. GRANDMA'S BOY is the foundation of Harold's geek tales. Here, he's a pitiful coward whose Grandma encourages him to have guts and fight a persistant bully and the tramp who terrorizes the town. THE FRESHMAN has Harold as the White Steve Urkel. This pathetic nerd goes to college and goes up to people with a stupid dance and says "step right up and call me speedy." He becomes the school joke, but see what happens. It's a great story about being yourself, as is THE KID BROTHER, another geek vs. bullies tale distiguished by some really heartwarming moments and a hilarious scene with a monkey.
However, things go south with the early talkie FEET FIRST, with Harold as an ambitious shoe salesman. Like most early sound films, it's wooden and unfunny (except for Harold's ridiculous pontificating speech about shoes "Without shoes, we'd all be- BAREFOOT!" delivered with gusto). You'll skip a number of chapters on this one! The film goes on with a sound remake of the "human fly" scene from SAFETY LAST, marred by some Stepin Fetchit stereotype antics by Willie "Sleep & Eat" Best (Harold, who is usually nice to Blacks and other ethnic groups in his films refers to Best as "Charcoal!" Fortuantely, this was a rare exception for this usually likeable character).
With that said, go for it.
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