“Man
overboard. Send in the janitor.”
This Silent Sunday film Captain Kidd’s Kids starring Harold
Lloyd is the shortest silent film I have seen so far and one of the funniest.
A
Boy (Lloyd) has thrown himself a bachelor party in his apartment the night
before he is to be married. He got so drunk he slept in a dresser drawer with a
bandage around his head and a block of ice under his pillow. The Girl (Bebe
Daniels) he is supposed to marry her mother has heard about how out of hand the
party got that she refuses to let her daughter marry him. She is taking the
Girl to the Canary Islands. The Boy decides to follow her.
On
the boat the Boy’s butler gets seasick. He makes fun of him mercilessly for it
until he gets sick himself. He finds a place to lie down. Not too long after he
lays down two men come to try to steal his wallet. The Boy puts up a good fight
but he gets tossed overboard. The butler tries to throw a life saving tube and
winds up going overboard as well. A dog also somehow gets thrown overboard as
well. The two humans and the dog are adrift for twenty-four hours. They come
across a pirate ship. The ship is not your typical pirate ship- it is a ship
run by women!
The
Boy is very happy at first until the women make him work. He starts off with the
task to wash the ship but gives up as soon as the mop is placed in his hands. Then
he is sent down to help the cook. He and the cook do not get along after he
bugs the poor cook to no end. After they get into a big fight the captain of
the ship makes the Boy walk the plank. One of the girls likes him. She goes
down to the dungeon and lets the other male prisoners they have caught go so
they can try to take over the ship. The women crowd around the Boy and the one
girl pirate. They get a rope around his neck and try to hang him.
The
women’s ship was all just a dream. The Boy wakes up right where he fell asleep
on. The rope he fell asleep on somehow got wrapped around his neck. He sees the
Girl and her mother. He gives the mother a piece of his mind and lets her know
that they are going to be married.
Captain Kidd’s Kids was hilarious from
beginning to end. Harold Lloyd was so funny. All the things he did were so
slick and so quick. I thought it was genius how at the beginning when the Boy
was drunk he had a bandage on his head and a block of ice under his pillow his
head hurt so bad. Captain Kidd’s Kids
is only twenty-one minutes long and is available to view on Youtube.
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