Review of Safety Last!

Right off the bat, the humor that ensued immediately told me as a viewer that this was going to be no boring story. Although, I did feel like the movie jumped far too soon into the storyline. Normally, when I think of a film, there's at LEAST ten minutes, if not more (not included opening titles, etc.), where the audience gets some background information and is slowly climbing into the roller coaster ride. I feel like in this film, we automatically get onto the roller coaster without a safety speech and how to correctly put on the seatbelts. I soon left my worries behind as I watched countless trick after trick be played out by none other than Harold Lloyd himself. Some tricks were unpredictable while most were out of the blue and quite clever. I thought the score for the film was absolutely incredible. It felt as though every character or character duo had their own theme (proven by the drunk man towards the end of the movie when his screen time is accompanied by a certain style of music to give the affect that he's intoxicated). This observation lay outside of the pre-existing change of music as the score follows each scene. Not only this, but I found it impressive how much the film jumped back and forth between different stories. What I mean is, for example, we can see what happens between our main character and his boss and the shots cut back and forth. We can see different situations occurring at the end of the film as the climb takes place. This gives a sense that the viewer isn't immersed in just one branch of the scene. However, I found that the scene of the climb was painfully long. It can be argued that the film essentially led up to this moment, and you can't really skip parts and end up from the second floor to the fifth floor. Seeing different characters within the scene, like Bill and the cop, the drunk man, and Mildred helped break up the abundance of screen time Harold had. It had felt long and drawn out. The acting in this movie was capturing and entertaining, as they have to tell the story with expression, not their words. This movie felt more like an extended comic clip rather than a film, but the benefit of the doubt should be given because...well, it's an early silent film. Although it may be ahead of it's time from how I perceive silent films to be, there are still aspects that weren't fully developed or taken advantage of. Overall, even if my attention's grab faded away as the movie progressed, I was pleasantly surprised with the overall production and output of this film.