It seems that after Harry Langdon left Mack Sennet's studios to produce his own films, Sennett decided to cash in on his popularity and find a good use for his old scenarios by casting Eddie Quillan in a series of films as an imitation of Langdon's innocent child-man character. This is one of those films.
It's interesting and odd to see Quillan made up to look like Langdon. He seems far more made-up than Langdon ever did while wearing the same make-up. Seeing him ape Harry's vague style of physical movement becomes almost a little unsettling, because it's clearly not natural for Quillan's body. Of course, he doesn't capture the anything of the nuance of Langdon's character – which was all in his performance – and so isn't very effective. There are occasional little suggestions that he could develop an effective, forlorn little character of his own from what he is doing, but he never gets the chance to. Quillan gets surprisingly little do here for a supposed lead comic. We see him a bunch, but never get much chance to look at him – possibly to disguise that he isn't really Harry Langdon.
This film bears Mack Sennett's typical hallmark of being totally unconcerned with plot, but "Catalina Here I Come" actually seems to move rather lazily and slowly, not at Sennett's usual frenetic pace. This makes the opening scenes in the café where Harry works rather low-key and pleasant. They are punctuated with a series of silly, out-of-nowhere gags. Some of them try too hard and don't work, while some – included a bit where Eddie lets a cup of hot coffee overflow because he is so transfixed staring at a girl he likes – are rather funny.
At the end of this, though, it revealed that our story is about a swimmer in the Catalina race. This leads to an attempt to shoehorn real Catalina footage (a fact the title cards make sure to point out) together with original shots to make a funny movie, which doesn't work. There are plenty of lingering shots of the famous Sennett Bathing Beauties, which might be pleasant viewing but aren't great movie-making. They are randomly mixed with some real Catalina footage and Andy Clyde (chameleon-like as ever, he plays the café-owner and, apparently a crab-hunter) and Quillan running around and reacting. There a stunt gag of Quillan apparently running on water away from a big fish that goes on way too long – it seems like a minute.
This is an interesting curiosity that speaks more about Harry Langdon than Eddie Quillan – that he was influential enough to inspire such a blatant imitation (Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy had them as well) and that he was subtle and unique enough that he could not be effectively imitated.
