“The
Plot
A
youth of twenty one and a Maid of eighteen. Shakespeare couldn’t have asked for
more”
As with almost all of Harold Lloyd’s films he plays The
Boy and Mildred Davis plays The Girl. This Boy and Girl work in the same office
building in different offices. From the windows of their offices they hang out
of them and talk to each other. The Boy wants to marry The Girl he gives her a
ring.
The Girl works in a doctor’s office. The doctor’s office
is not doing very well and he has to let her go. She tells the Boy and he is
determined to help her out he says he will bring in patients for her. As he is
walking out of the building he comes across an office that is a company who
hires acrobats. He gets the idea for the acrobat to come with him on his quest.
The Boy has the acrobat fall over and pretend to be hurt.
When he falls and calls out crowds come around him. When the crowds begin to
form around the fallen acrobat, The Boy hands out the doctor’s cards. The scheme
goes well for a while until the acrobat gets hit on the head with a flower pot.
The Boy goes on with the scheme for a little longer. On his last attempt he
place soap in water that had been placed on the street by a street cleaner.
The Boy’s plan works and the people he helped along come
to the doctor. All happy, he goes to find The Girl. He sees her, all happy and
giddy, in the arms of a much larger man. The large man tells the girl that he
cannot wait to marry her. The Boy is terribly heartbroken by what he has just
seen. Unfortunately he walks away too soon otherwise he would have heard that
the large man is The Girl’s brother who was just ordained a priest and wants to
marry her and The Boy. He goes back to his office and attempts to kill himself
in several ways in his despair.
On his last attempt, The Boy rigs a gun to go off and
shoot him when someone opens the door. He sits blindfolded at his desk with the
window open behind. Next to the office building is another one being built. Steel
beams are still being placed. One of the beams goes a little rogue and it picks
him up. Before that a light bulb went fell off a table and he thinks it shot
him and he is dead. The Boy thinks he has been carried off to heaven. When he
takes the blindfold off he sees an angel-like girl playing a harp and a statue
of an angel. He realizes he is not in heaven when he hears a jazz band playing
somewhere in the distance. The Boy manages to get out of the chair onto the
steel beams of the emerging building.
A few mishaps and almost falls to his death, The Boy
finally finds his way to solid ground. The Girl comes over to him and says her
brother can marry them.
Never Weaken was
alright. I like Harold Lloyd he was very silly, very sly, and very entertaining
with his physical comedy but I have watched a handful of his films and I feel
like they are all very similar to each other. Never Weaken is only a half hour long (PERFECT for my ever
shortening attention span) and it is available to view on YouTube.
No comments:
Post a Comment