On the Fire (1919) User Reviews

Poor remake of "Waiter's Ball"

[wadetaylor · 5/10 · 15 November 2005]

I like Harold Lloyd, but Fatty Arbuckle did this movie first and better.

Though, technically, the plots are different. Many of the scenes in "On the Fire" seem to be direct copies from Arbuckle's earlier "Waiter's Ball." Such similarities as trying to kill a fish with a gun hopping around out of water, the tossing of the food to the waiters, and several other scenes seem to be carbons of Arbuckle's film.

Harold Lloyd had worked with Arbuckle at Keystone, and I doubt that he personally would have copied "Waiter's Ball," but someone in charge must have.

There are still a couple of funny parts, but watch "Waiter's Ball" for the superior effort and original idea.

Go Fish

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 30 June 2008]

Harold Lloyd is employed as "The Chef" for a fancy restaurant. Mr. Lloyd is obviously not one to labor over a hot stove; instead, he has the kitchen equipped with all kinds of common gadgets. The gadgets, including gardening tools, help him prepare food, while Lloyd relaxes with a cigarette. The kitchen may be imaginatively set up, but it isn't funny. Later, when Lloyd goes out to wait on tables, the Hal Roach comedy picks up considerably. Lloyd is worth waiting for. "Snub" Pollard plays an amusing assistant chef, plate slinger, and bottle washer; and, Bebe Daniels is an expectedly irresistible restaurant patron.

**** On the Fire (2/23/19) Hal Roach ~ Harold Lloyd, 'Snub' Pollard, Bebe Daniels

It's hard to imagine that Lloyd went from this to "Grandma's Boy" and "Dr. Jack" only three years later!

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 24 August 2021]

By 1921-1922, Harold Lloyd had perfected the sweet persona that made him the number one film comic of the 1920s....yes, topping even the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton at the box office. However, from the late 1910s to this time, Lloyd had perfected the look that made him famous (the glasses and straw hat)...but not the style of his later beloved character. In other words, he looked like the Lloyd we all came to love...but he acted quite different. In some of them, he was even a nasty jerk...the complete opposite of his later persona! "On the Fire" is clearly one of these 'in between' films...where Harold LOOKED like the beloved character but certainly acted nothing like him.

When the story begins, Harold and Snub (Snub Pollard...his perennial sidekick during this era) are working in the kitchen at some restaurant. Taking the idea from Fatty Arbuckle's "Waiter's Ball" and Snub's "It's a Gift", Harold has apparently rigged up a system so he can sit on his butt and pull levers to do his cooking. Frankly, the two films I mentioned did this MUCH better.

After a while, Snub and Harold are asked by the boss to wait tables. From then on, the film is strictly slapstick...an old fashioned (even by 1919) way to get cheap laughs. Capturing a fish and chasing it about and then shooting it really made no sense and was emphasizing laughs over story.

The bottom line is that this story really was not original and degenerated to cheap laughs and violence. Not among Lloyd's or Pollard's best, that's for sure.

Hurray for Harold Lloyd

[Single-Black-Male · 12 December 2003]

I think the repackaged version of this film was much better than the original. In 'Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy' there was a double bill of one or two reelers which included this one. The narrator gave a commentary over the unfolding events which brought something to the story that wasn't originally there.