Movie Crazy

Harold Hall (Harold Lloyd) is movie crazy, so much so that he sends a photo of himself (or so he thinks) to a movie executive hoping for a chance to get his foot in the door. With a photo of a different man, the executive encourages to come to Hollywood for a screen test, but Hall's anxiousness does not translate well to the people there. He ruins films in which he is simply an extra, destroys the executive's office, and yet somehow manages to win over a budding actress (Constance Cummings).

Movie Crazy is a disappointment after hearing rave reviews and seeing several wonderful Lloyd talkies. It has its moments, but it is by no means a great film. As an early talkie, it shines. There are some silent moments, but the camera is hardly static and some of the dialogue is very funny. However, as a film from master comedian Lloyd, it lacks. Too many of the jokes seem familiar and dull, some having been used in silents. Also, the timing is completely off for most of them, making them difficult to laugh at.

Watch this film expecting to have fun, but not expecting to see a favorite. It will entertain you for the night at least.

MOVIE CRAZY is one of Harold Lloyd's very best films, and that includes his silents. Sound complements his visual gags and adds depth to the story's characters without slowing down the humor.

What really makes this film singular is his relationship with the femme lead. Constance Cummings, one of the great, forgotten thirties performers, provides a complexity of character unique in this kind of comedy, certainly for the time. She's not a tacked-on "love interest;" her relation to Lloyd is integral to the story and essential to the success of the film. Her character is cosmopolitan, and an interesting aspect of it is her relationship to her slim, attractive and cultured black maid (NOT your usual thirties movie maid!) who seems more of a companion than a maid. At first Cummings finds Lloyd ridiculous, then irritating, but after a while she finds his natural affinity for disaster strangely interesting and she becomes fond of him. She's amused by him, and toys with him in an affectionate way.

Laughter is a mysterious, fragile thing. Among other things, it can be injured by too big an advance expectation. And some comedy needs an audience for fullest effect: Lloyd's comedy is that type. (Keaton, on the other hand, works as well in solitude.) Seeing this film with a large audience, I was helpless with laughter at numerous points in the film. The effect may not be the same if you see it on television, alone.

This is not a perfect film (but then really great films are rarely perfect). The sequence where he accidentally dons a magician's coat is funny, but too long and a bit too mechanically calculated. His battle with the villain on a waterlogged movie set meets the requirements for an action-filled finale, but is not the film's most inventive sequence. But the best sequences are terrific.

Partly because of the long-time unavailability of his films until recent years, Harold Lloyd has received critical short shrift from the silent comedy mavens. Keaton and Chaplin are demi-gods, and Laurel & Hardy and Langdon have been fully rehabilitated (if ever they were in disrepute), but Lloyd is still in the shadow, and that's unfair. Whatever else he is, Lloyd was consistently the FUNNIEST of them all, and his gags are always fresh, inventive and original. (I say this having seen nearly all the films of all these great performers.) The Lloyd character, too, though it varied from film to film, was never just a cipher, but a real, fully developed persona.

Seen in the right circumstances, MOVIE CRAZY can hold its own with filmdom's greatest classic comedies.

An entertaining little film. I recommend watching it without thinking of the silent film star Harold Lloyd, or measuring his performance to some expectation you may have. Just enjoy a nice little romantic comedy with a beautiful leading lady, some behind the scenes looks at Hollywood sets from the day, and some funny gags. Nothing hysterical, but clever and had me chuckling at times.

Constance Cummings is fantastic in what is practically a dual role here. She plays a Hollywood actress that Lloyd falls for in her Spanish makeup, and befriends in her 'normal life'. Of course, the latter isn't until after he's lost a shoe in the rain, splashed mud all over her, and wrecked the top of her convertible, in a very nice sequence. She takes pity on him, nicknaming him 'Trouble', and is drawn to his unaffected, honest way. That honesty is put to a test, however, when she questions him about his interactions with the 'Spanish actress', knowing full well what he's said and done with her. These scenes where she tests Lloyd's loyalty are excellent, and the dialogue and emotions between the two are highly authentic. There is a certain sweetness to the film, but it's not cloying.

As for gags, the attempts Lloyd's character makes to get into the film industry are amusing, starting with being an extra in a scene practically moments after he's gotten off the train into town (lol), and continuing on to a screen test with 26 takes. The actress in the screen test with him (Mary Doran) is motivated because of a past slight on her sex appeal, but after she says to the director "Then lead me to it, baby! I'll show you flame enough to burn that bird up alive", he proceeds to stumbles all over, and can't manage to even answer the phone in the scene without destroying the set. The scene at the party where Lloyd is inadvertently wearing the magician's coat is probably the funniest, as its contents (eggs, mice, rabbits, etc) are dispensed one by one.

The film is well put together and has some interesting camera angles. I found it interesting that Lloyd had to direct quite a bit of it because credited director Clyde Bruckman was regularly intoxicated. The film isn't the pinnacle of Lloyd's career or the best of the pre-Code comedies you'll find, but it's solid and worth seeing.

... and seems to get blamed for all of them. Sure, he's clumsy, but he isn't the cause of half the bad things that happen to his character.

Lloyd plays Harold Hall, a guy who is "movie crazy" - he wants to be an actor in Hollywood. First unfortunate event - He writes a letter to a movie producer stating his desire to become an actor and has a photograph of himself he plans to mail with the letter. His father looks at the letter and mixes up a photo of a much more handsome fellow with Harold's photo, and the handsome fellow's photo is what gets mailed, unknown to Harold. So when he gets a letter back saying to come to Hollywood for a film test he has no idea what has happened.

Once in Hollywood, there are more mix-ups, the main one being that he doesn't realize that the beautiful Spanish girl he meets on a film set is actually actress Mary Sears (Constance Cummings) in make-up with a fake accent. He can't figure out how Mary knows everything he says to the Spanish girl. The dark side of things is that Mary has an actor boyfriend who has made it clear to Harold that he'd kill Mary before he'd see somebody else have her.

Lloyd was always the optimistic young man of the roaring 20s during the silent era, and by keeping things in the rather make believe land of Hollywood he manages to avoid setting this film in the depths of the Great Depression.

Lloyd was very successful monetarily - a very good businessman. As a result he could afford to outright retire from filmmaking after 1938 and never worry about money. This made his films - and in particular his sound films - become rather obscure and hard to find. Ironically, Buster Keaton stayed much better known because he was bad at the business end of filmmaking and had to keep working.

This film is very funny and I highly recommend it.

Harold Hall is a man who desperately wants to be an actor.Soon he is off to Hollywood.They are expecting somebody who doesn't look anything like Harold, because he accidentally sent a wrong photo.In Hollywood Harold causes lots of trouble and falls in love to an actress named Mary Sears.Movie Crazy is a hilarious comedy from 1932.Harold Lloyd shows that he wasn't the master of silent movies only, he could handle talkies too.He runs from a funny situation to another.Constance Cummings is brilliant as Mary.She does her job just as good as Harold does.This movie made me laugh many times.If a comedy movie does that, then that's a good comedy.