source: Feet First

Moviecut—Feet First

Feet First

It would have been better if this film had never been produced. I first saw "Feet First" on the big screen when I was about twelve with my grandmother and thought it was funny then, but that was over fifty years ago. Seeing it again tonight, I don't think I smiled once. Hearing Lloyd's every grunt and gasp and his cries for help as he climbs the building at the finale make one wish this were a silent film. Having seen "Safety Last!" earlier, it was difficult to understand why he would want to remake those same concluding scenes just seven years later. Others on this database have written about the offensive racism of Sleep N' Eat (Willie Best), the Black actor who appears near the end of the film, who fails to help Lloyd. One reviewer confuses him with Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and another writes that since it was made in 1930, what can you do about it, implying that racism that is old is fine. I would hope most people today are a little more enlightened.

This film has 4 sections. First of all, Harold (Harold Lloyd) works his way up to being a shoe-store salesman and it's not ever really funny. The next stage is set in a club and is extremely bad. It is never funny - only tedious - with a complimentary annoying drunk played by Arthur Houseman thrown in for bad measure. The third stage sees Harold on a cruise and the film gets incredibly boring. Once again, it is never funny. If you haven't slit your wrists by this point, you will have survived for the final stage which sees Harold painstakingly draw out a slapstick scene outside a building.....oh my God - is he going to fall?........ That's it. Crap.

A mild mannered young man, working at the bottom rung of a shoe shop, falls for a high society girl and tries to reinvent himself. Lloyd's second talkie is really divided into three sections; working and meeting the girl, unwittingly traveling on a cruise ship, and then hanging onto a high rise building for his life. However, it's well below the standard of the best of Harold's silents (like the lovely "The Kid Brother"). The film does get better as it goes (the ship and building sections do become reasonably entertaining, if nothing else), but it's rarely very funny, and one can't help but think it would have worked better as a silent.

"Feet First" is a fine Harold LLoyd film, that clearly shows the master comic as adept to making funny talkies as he was to making silent movie classics. Harold Lloyd possessed a great sense of timing as well as a keen sense of what made audiences laugh. Even if you've seen "Safety Last" (referring to the "hanging on the clock" scene) you'll enjoy this film (including the similar but still hilarious scene with Lloyd hanging from the side of the building). Concerning another reviewer's comment about "racial slurs", undoubtedly the reference is to a scene whereas Harold Lloyds's character (while hanging from the building) calls out to a black fellow using the name "Charcoal". Look, it was 1930; thats the way it was then, so get over it. "Feet First" is a wonderfully funny motion picture from one of the screen's greatest comedians, Harold Lloyd.

Harold Lloyd's second talkie, after Welcome Danger (which, if I recall correctly, was only part talkie). It's okay, but a step down from Welcome Danger. As far as I'm concerned, Lloyd's The Milky Way from 1933 is among his best films, so I certainly don't think he lost his talent after the silent era. Feet First comes across as desperate at times, mostly during the final act, which re-creates the climax of Safety Last!, with Lloyd dangling off the side of a skyscraper. In this film, Lloyd is a lowly shoe salesman who is mistaken for a leather baron by his employer, for whose daughter (Barbara Kent, star of Pal Fejos' Lonesome) he has fallen. There are some amusing sketches, but nothing particularly great.