Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Cristi_Ciopron A comedy with Lloyd, Menjou, Verree Teasdale, Helen Mack, W. Gargan, directed by a distinguished craftsman. Menjou is at his best, very believable as a dishonest manager.It is slapstick with a reek of folksy artfulness, but the thoughtful plot also has this neat dramatic dimension, required by Lloyd's style, which elicited, entailed this dramatic sharpness; his character was unusual and surprising among the peers, with unexpected means, and skillful in his own way, a naughty wag, determined not to be a victim, which makes the role so truth-like and folksy, with a certain folk realism, slyness and cleverness, a survivor, not at all helpless or clueless, he has his own merry pranks. The lead's slapstick was extravagant (the parades with bagpipes, the horses, already the lion, the flying hat) and baroque, compared to Keaton's.The protagonist is a proletarian. His _naivetés proceed mainly from inexperience (the puddle, the sportive delusions), not from imbecility, he has a gleam of cleverness. His story synthesizes two lines of realism, a modern popular one, and a folkloric one, reminding of the legendary jesters, and the movie's outlook needs to be explained by both of them, plus the extravagant slapstick, whether satirical (the lion, the hat, the bagpipes: the milkman's delusions of glamor …), or not. The milkman is decent and kind (and reasonably gullible in a milieu unusual for him), but not an idealist (this would be a type of lead unknown to the school of folkloric humor).Of the three ladies, Helen Mack plays the milkman's sister, Verree Teasdale the heartless blonde (Miss Westley).Menjou gives one of his best performances as the unprincipled, scheming and shrewd manager, he has an astounding ease.W. Gargan, who is very likable and handsome, plays Speed, Burleigh's future brother-in-law.So, a work of thoughtful and crafty comedy; the engine is the storyline, very polished. Some of the characters are glamorous (Miss Westley, the manager, Speed), others not (the sister and the girlfriend); there is a blockhead, Spider, but even him is the generic blockhead of the '30s comedies, not a slapstick one. Lloyd had this possibility of folk drama, because there is something dramatic in his character's struggle to survive. The movie begins with his humiliations, and he finds the way to upstage them all, he finds a makeshift. His Burleigh is sometimes clumsy, but neither naive, nor humble, he vanquishes the wealthier and their routine. He's sly.

Robert J. Maxwell This Harold Lloyd feature is pretty funny. Lloyd is a milkman who accidentally knocks out the drunken boxing champion, William Gargan, on the sidewalk and becomes a media celebrity.Promoters see money in it. They want to take him under their wing and turn him professional, but the vision-challenged and slightly built Lloyd will have none of it, not until the horse pulling his milk wagon collapses and needs veterinarian care. So he does it for Agnes.Lionel Stander is the trainer who teaches Lloyd the rudiments of boxing but Lloyd is hopeless as a fighter, except that he ducks punches effortlessly, a trick he picked up as a child to avoid being beaten by the other school kids.A series of bouts is fixed and Lloyd wins until he faces the champ, Gargan, in the ring. Gargan is to deck the wonder boy and win a lot of money for Adolf Menjou and his crowd of crooked promoters. I don't think I want to give away the ending -- as if you couldn't guess it -- but the trick turns on the barely literate Lionel Stander mixing up the word "ammonia" with the label on a bottle of medicine for "insomnia." There are three babes in the movie. Two are young, attractive, and quite sexy. The third, Verree Teasdale, is given the best lines in the movie and is a treat to watch. I'm trying to think of one of her throw-away cracks and I'm failing.This was remade ten years later as a Danny Kaye movie, "The Kid From Brooklyn". Lionel Stander appeared in both -- as the same character, I think. This is one of those instances in which the remake is perhaps better than the original. Danny Kaye sounds more at home in the movie, he's quicker on his feet than Lloyd, ducks punches more absurdly, and his antics in the ring are even funnier than Lloyd's, which are ludic enough to begin with. Except for Kaye, color, and the ever-seductive Virginia Mayo, both films are comparable. Lloyd's gets extra points for being first.Either version should induce smiles.

verbusen I am a big 1930's movie fan and will watch most anything that I see on Turner Classic Movies thats new for me. So I gave this a shot, after all it's the great Harold Lloyd who rivaled Chaplin as a great silent film comedian. I have watched much less of Lloyd's silent films then of Chaplins but I have to say I'm a much bigger Chaplin fan. Anyway this film fell so flat for me that I didn't finish it. I can understand why his sound career was so limited, he didn't get very good material to work with. After you've seen Chaplin, Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Martin and Lewis, The Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy do boxing spoofs (or violence in general), this one is very forgettable. I was also interested in watching Adolphe Menjou as I really enjoyed him in Paths Of Glory but his role here also did nothing special for me. Maybe they should have gotten into the boxing sooner because at least half the film (at least it seemed that way) is before he gets in a ring. I can tell there are a lot of Lloyd fans here and this wont be a popular review but I must rate this as compared to what else was out there at the time, 4 out of 10. Don't watch this with anyone your trying to get to like old movies as they may not watch another one with you again, very flat. For an alternative to anyone who really liked this or is looking for more little known comedies in general I recommend "Kelly The Second" made a few years earlier, another nobody becomes a boxer comedy with Patsy Kelly and in a supporting role Charles Chase. These have both been shown on the Turner Classic Movies channel.

bigblonde I taped this movie when it was shown on TCM recently and I've rewatched it several times since, enjoying it more with each viewing. It's a hilarious and energetic movie, and the editing, framing, and compositions of characters are always fresh, funny, and cliché-free. I especially like how the film echoes Burleigh's "ducking" abilities by cleverly using "ducking" techniques, or ellipses, in various ways: in telling the story, by leaving out certain scenes and revealing them later; and even in framing (in one scene Adolph Menjou plays a scene hidden behind a tree branch, "ducking out" of the frame). This film is as good as The Awful Truth and to me has the same strange beauty of that wonderful film.