Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

thinbeach Set in New York, the thinest of plots ties Speedy through from beginning to end, in which they must save the old family horse pulled taxi business. Mostly though it is a sequence of barely related shorts stitched together, which ultimately makes Speedy less than the sum of its parts. My favourite sequence was Lloyd the taxi driver, where he manages a thousand different ways to lose passengers, only to cost himself money! There are many charms and chuckles elsewhere and its an enjoyable enough ride, but unfortunately it ends with its least memorable sequence - relying on group violence and the old standard chase sequence - instead of the cleverness that preceded.

rdjeffers Monday April 11, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle "New York, where everybody is in such a hurry that they take Saturday's bath on Friday so they can do Monday's washing on Sunday." A soda jerk takes his girl on a date, then saves her granddad's horse-trolley from crooked businessmen. Harold "Speedy" Swift (Harold Lloyd) could hold down a job if it didn't interfere with baseball. During a stint as a cabby he drives Babe Ruth to work, nearly killing them both and gets fired when he sits behind his boss at the game. Pop Dillon can't work and laments, "The folks at City Hall said that as long as my car runs once every twenty-four hours, the car n' track is mine." Speedy and the neighbors step in to save the day in the hair-raising finale.In his eleventh and final silent feature, Harold Lloyd made the most of bustling New York locations, including Coney Island's magnificent Luna Park and Yankee Stadium. Cutie-pie Ann Christy plays Jane, with Bert Woodruff as the gruff-but-lovable old man, but the dog nearly steals the show! "The House of Hits!" Starring Harold Lloyd, "The fastest, Funniest Feller in the Films," Speedy opened at Seattle's United Artists Theatre (formerly the Liberty) on 1st Avenue, Thursday, April 5, 1928 for the "First Showing Anywhere in the Wide, Wide World!" Jan Sofer and The United Artists Orchestra provided live musical accompaniment and performed an overture of popular tunes, "In the Song Shop." "Grab a seat in Harold's snicker special. He guarantees a laugh in every bump and a thrill in every rattle!"

Bill Slocum The last Harold Lloyd silent comedy, "Speedy" is a yuk-filled feature boasting some impressive thrill scenes and Jazz Age Manhattan ambiance. If not as satisfying as some earlier Lloyd silents, it manages to showcase just why Lloyd was the most popular of the big three silent clowns.Harold plays the title character, who may have gotten his name from undiagnosed ADD. Speedy flits from job to job while he dreams of baseball and his girl Jane (Ann Christy). Jane wants to marry Speedy, but first there's the business of her grandfather's horse-drawn trolley, which a greedy railway magnate wants to put out of business any way he can.As other commenters here point out, this is less a unified film than a sequence of four shorts stitched together as follows: 1. Harold the soda jerk. 2. Harold and Jane at Coney Island. 3. Harold the taxi driver. 4. Harold saves Pop's trolley. The only serious concession to "Speedy's" feature length is that some business of short #4 is introduced between shorts #1 and #2.Add to that the hit-or-miss gagginess of much of the film, and what you wind up with is less satisfying than Lloyd classics like "The Freshman" or "The Kid Brother." Even early Lloyd features like "Grandma's Boy" or "Dr. Jack" had loftier goals than the laugh-driven "Speedy". Yet "Speedy" is funny most of the time, and does work in some other ways, too.Though I'm not a Yankees fan, I'm a sucker with any movie that features Babe Ruth. Here, in a cameo, he does excellent work as a passenger afraid for his life getting a mad cab ride from the star-struck Speedy."Even when you strike out, you miss 'em close," Speedy enthuses, eyes on Babe and not the road."I don't miss 'em half as close as you do!" Babe yells back.It's cool just seeing these two icons share the screen, and if you watch just before the 53rd minute, you'll see a third icon, Lou Gehrig, slip into the background during a Harold-Babe two-shot and proceed to stick his tongue out at the camera!As fun as moments like that are, "Speedy" doesn't add up to the sum of its parts until the final third, when we resume the story of Pop's horse-drawn trolley. There we get a fitting capper to Lloyd's silent-clown career, with a hilarious street battle between young toughs and old coots fought with flypaper, horseshoes, and a pegleg, among other implements. Then there's the final trolley ride, which employs a horrific-looking real accident to create some tension over the question of whether Harold will save the day.Like many note, "Speedy" is as captivating for what you see in the background. So much of it was shot for real in Manhattan, and even when there's no comically rude Hall-of-Fame first basemen in sight, there's a lot of energy and activity on view, whether its tugboats on the Hudson, taxis on Times Square, or street urchins ingenuously looking at the camera wondering what's up. The Coney Island sequence is the most labored part of the film for me, but it's still not only inventively played out but especially edifying for those of us who wonder what amusement parks were like before the age of the steel roller-coaster or more stringent safety regulations.Lloyd and director Ted Wilde knew what the audience wanted, and deliver it here with a cherry on top. If not quite as on the money after more than 80 years, "Speedy" is still well worth watching for fans of Lloyd and silent comedy.

ccthemovieman-1 For a number of people, this is their Harold Lloyd film, especially if they are from New York City. I can understand that, as it's a funny movie and has great shots of what it looked like in NYC in 1927. (The film was released in 1928). It also is famous for having a 5-minute guest appearance by Babe Ruth.My vote still goes to "The Freshman," as Lloyd's best but that's all subjective. This is a solid entry and if nothing, else it's a great showcase to see what The Big Apple looked like 80 years ago.This gets off to good start, too, unlike a number of silent comedies. Harold's ice- cream parlor antics, as a soda jerk, are a lot of fun to watch. I loved the way he signaled his co-workers on how his beloved home team, the Yankees, were doing inning-by-inning. After Harold loses that job, he winds up driving a cab and then, at the end trying to help his girlfriend's father. The elderly man drives the last horse-trolley in the city and is being threatened by someone who wants to buy him out, and Harold comes to the rescue with a dramatic race to beat the clock in the final hectic 15 minutes of the film.While he was driving the cab, he gets the famous Ruth as one of his customers and he's so excited he almost cracks up the cab and Ruth goes crazy in the back seat. It's a funny scene.Also tied in with the film is a nice, long scene with Lloyd and his girl (Ann Christy) having a wild day at Coney Island. That, too, was fun and interesting to see. In all, a fun movie and a chance to see Lloyd finish up his great silent career, before films changed to "talkies."