Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

cmayerle-41064 Sturges made so many great films. This one falls somewhat short of his best, but is still entertaining in its own right. I recommend d_fienberg's review because it is very insightful. Briefly, this is a standard Preston Sturges plot with one of the icons of early Hollywood.Lloyd was much better than I was expecting (maybe I was thinking of Norma Desmond's assessment of silent film stars, "We didn't need dialog! We had faces," or the difficult transition depicted in Singing in the Rain). Lloyd had terrific facial expressions and maintained his impeccable physical comedy from his earlier days; some of the early stars who did their own stunts were pretty beaten up in their later years. However, he also executed his dialog like a true comedian.It's too bad that this film wasn't commercially successful because the copies are in poor shape. The audio is pretty good, though.

MARIO GAUCI An interesting if ultimately unsuccessful combination of two clashing comedy styles (overseen by humorless mogul Howard Hughes no less), this film turned out to be Harold Lloyd's swan-song - and, as such, it ended on a somewhat positive note (even though the film was made during Sturges' period of decline).It opens with a reprise of the climactic football game from one of Lloyd's greatest successes, THE FRESHMAN (1925), eventually bringing that same character (albeit renamed!) up to date. Still, in the end, the film is more Sturges than Lloyd: even if the star plays one of his trademark roles of a patsy (though not without the occasional display of ingenuity), there is little of the star's characteristic slapstick here. Instead, the comedy is in Sturges' typical frantic (and, mainly, dialogue-driven) style - with which Lloyd isn't entirely comfortable; the film also features Sturges' stock company of character players in full swing. That said, it's climaxed by yet another of the star comedian's thrilling set-pieces which finds him overhanging from a building-ledge - hampered this time around by a myopic Jimmy Conlin and an understandably disgruntled circus lion! While a disappointing whole (it was re-issued in 1950 in a shortened version renamed MAD Wednesday), the film does contain a number of undeniable gems: his romantic attachment to every female member of one particular family (all of whom happen to work for the same firm over a 20-year period); his first encounter with Conlin, with the two of them exchanging wise sayings (the optimistic Lloyd had kept a handful nailed to the wall behind him at his former workplace) in order to explain their current dejected state-of-mind; and, best of all, the unforgettable scene in which Lloyd takes his first alcoholic beverage (an impromptu concoction by bartender Edgar Kennedy and which he names "The Diddlebock") that invariably provokes an unexpected yet hilarious reaction.

cstring-nyc Preston Sturgess's funniest film and also Harold Lloyd's. Includes clip from Lloyd's silent 20's film, "The Freshman" which includes famous clip of slapstick football game which Marx Brothers must have copied. "The Freshman" also must have influenced Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy". Story of a waterboy at football game who gets into the game, saves the day unexpectedly, and then is hired as an accountant at a bank by an an enthusiastic boss who forgets all about him. After having lost his all his money -- in his own bank -- during the Depression, and remaining in the same dead end job for 20 years, he gets fired by his boss who barely remembers him and gives up on marrying the girl of his dreams who works with him. He then has his first drink (his "sin") and it changes his life in wild ways that even call to mind the film, "Run, Lola, Run". Also calls to mind movies satirizing office work like "Haiku Tunnel" and "Office Space." (1999). Side splitting scenes with real circus animals, including one on a skyscraper ledge with an adorable lion.

gmw-5 Calling this film brilliant isn't strong enough. The Dylan lyric "to laugh and cry in a single sound" fits because at the end of the film if your heartstrings are not being strummed then you may not be living.Lloyd is an everyman squashed by life who encounters a bartender and asks for his first drink, ever. The bartender rises to the challenge and... well, Lloyd spends part of the film piecing together what he did after consuming it... I'm telling you, this film is BRILLIANT. The way it's shot, the acting, the brilliant casting, the writing all work together in a way that has no equal in cinema; the silent version of "The Thief of Baghdad" comes to mind for its sense of unbridled fun and its soaring spirit. This is so much more than a comedy, at some point the movie glides past that label and really grabs the brass ring, you know what I mean? Truly brilliant, highest possible recommendation.