You could almost imagine Chaplin making this film. Lloyd plays a down-at-heel playwright living in a flop house in the wrong part of Broadway who is barely able to scrape together the money for his rent. When he does manage to gather enough small coins and crumpled notes to meet his final demand he meets his equally impoverished neighbour (Bebe Daniels, exuding an irresistible earthy charm) and gives it all to her instead so that she can pay her rent. He has a change of heart when he sees his curmudgeonly landlady's stooge beating yet another neighbour in a quite remarkable sequence, but by then it's too late and he has to spend the next five minutes of screen time acrobatically avoiding both the landlady and her thug.
The second part of the film takes place in the rundown Broadway theatre where Daniels' works and where Lloyd makes ingenious attempts to sell his comedy play. A relationship seems to be developing but Lloyd then spies her climbing into a cab with a stage-door Johnny. Lloyd steals a lift on the back of the cab and follows them into a nightclub where he gets lucky on the roulette wheel just as the police arrive to break things up. There then follows a lengthy chase sequence and it's at this point that the similarities with Chaplin's work really shine through – even though there's no feeling that Lloyd was copying his fellow comic's work.
It's strange how penury was such a popular subject for comedies of the 20s, a time when America was enjoying an unprecedented boom. With the exception of Laurel & Hardy, comics of the 30s, when the world was enduring the worst depression it had ever known, largely steered clear of any reminders of the hardships their audiences were suffering. I suppose it's an escapism of sorts, only while it doesn't pander to audience wish-fulfilment in terms of wealth and happiness, the likes of Chaplin (and Lloyd here) cheer up their audiences by winning against the odds while thumbing their nose at authority. The police, in particular, are the targets here: they vigorously club a colleague over the head in the mistaken belief that he is Lloyd, and, in a time of prohibition, they sample the Casino's cache of alcohol whenever they think no-one is looking.
With it's frenetic pace and intricately choreographed chase sequences, I defy you not to laugh at this early example of Lloyd's work.
The second part of the film takes place in the rundown Broadway theatre where Daniels' works and where Lloyd makes ingenious attempts to sell his comedy play. A relationship seems to be developing but Lloyd then spies her climbing into a cab with a stage-door Johnny. Lloyd steals a lift on the back of the cab and follows them into a nightclub where he gets lucky on the roulette wheel just as the police arrive to break things up. There then follows a lengthy chase sequence and it's at this point that the similarities with Chaplin's work really shine through – even though there's no feeling that Lloyd was copying his fellow comic's work.
It's strange how penury was such a popular subject for comedies of the 20s, a time when America was enjoying an unprecedented boom. With the exception of Laurel & Hardy, comics of the 30s, when the world was enduring the worst depression it had ever known, largely steered clear of any reminders of the hardships their audiences were suffering. I suppose it's an escapism of sorts, only while it doesn't pander to audience wish-fulfilment in terms of wealth and happiness, the likes of Chaplin (and Lloyd here) cheer up their audiences by winning against the odds while thumbing their nose at authority. The police, in particular, are the targets here: they vigorously club a colleague over the head in the mistaken belief that he is Lloyd, and, in a time of prohibition, they sample the Casino's cache of alcohol whenever they think no-one is looking.
With it's frenetic pace and intricately choreographed chase sequences, I defy you not to laugh at this early example of Lloyd's work.