High and Dizzy

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Nick M A freshly graduated doctor (M.D., Ph.D., and T.N.T., thank you) is hard-up for business, but his priorities are such that he manages to lose his only client of the day by flirting with her so much that her father trundles her out of the office. Meanwhile, his buddy down the hall is supplementing his income by brewing some newly outlawed hooch (this being released scant months after the onset of Prohibition). The bottles start popping their tops, however, so to save the batch they have to drink all of the overflow. This renders them thoroughly sauced for the remainder of the film, which is the source of the vast majority of the comedic bits. Few would claim that High and Dizzy is a stellar picture, but it represents such an innovative departure for Harold Lloyd from his previous work that it *feels* like one to anyone watching them chronologically (as audiences of the time would have been, naturally). Few of his films in the last couple of years have felt formulaic, but he and director Hal Roach are really starting to push the boat out now. Scene-setting intertitles are few and far between, allowing the actors room to breathe to tell their own story. The comedic bits also feel almost uniformly fresh and innovative. My favorites are Lloyd drunkenly and frustratedly resetting the time on his watch to match the position of the hand on the elevator dial, the hat "walking away" after it was placed over the newborn puppy, and the hair-raising antics on the 12th story ledge. This last anticipates his work in Safety Last, which is perhaps his most famous film. The only gag that made my eyes roll was his literal hair-raising fear out on the ledge. He had just done this four months previously in Haunted Spooks. Tsk, tsk. Despite that, the the notable uptick in quality of Lloyd's and Roach's pictures is coming at the perfect time to claim a greater portion of their corner of the industry, and they are capitalizing on it fabulously well. Chaplin, the universally recognized king of the comedy genre at this point, is releasing pictures fewer and farther in between (with none at all for 1920). Meanwhile, Arbuckle is about to figure into his monumental scandal, which will further make room for more faces at the top of the pack. One other interesting thing of note: Lloyd had recently lost two fingers on his right hand when what he thought was a prop bomb went off in his hand during a publicity photo shoot, requiring him to wear a clever prosthetic to hide the missing digits for the rest of his career. For anyone curious to see it, the prop fingers are conspicuously evident the first time he attempts to press the call button for the elevator about half way through the film. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 10/31/24 Full Review Joel H High and Dizzy is my first experience watching an entire Harold Lloyd movie. To be honest, I was not overly impressed with it. It felt as if the filmmakers threw two comedy sketches together into a bottle and didn't blend them quite enough. This short film also seems to spend most of its time focusing on the drunks' antics, which get old rather quickly, and not enough time on the sleepwalking story, which is the more interesting plotline. There are some fun visual gags, and I still plan on seeking out more works by Harold Lloyd, but I don't think I'll be watching High and Dizzy again anytime soon. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 11/05/23 Full Review Audience Member good stuff but the time is wrong its longer than 2 minutes Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member Harold Lloyd kann akrobatisch einiges, seine Gags und Stunts kommen aber ein wenig aufgesetzt daher. Und seine Mimik ist überzogen (speziell im Vergleich zu Buster Keaton und Charles Chaplin) Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Read all reviews

High and Dizzy

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