Harold Lloyd stars as a smalltown boy who moves to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a movie star. While trying to break into the business, he falls madly in love with a starlet (Constance Cummings). Naturally, her jealous ex (Kenneth Thomson) butts in and tries to keep the fledgling lovebirds apart.
While Harold Lloyd transitioned from silent movies to talkies better than some of his contemporaries, much of his later work paled in comparison to his films from the silent era. Movie Crazy isn’t exactly bad, but it lacks the panache and charm of his earlier pictures. He was even recycling a lot of material at this point in his career. The plot is essentially the same as Girl Shy, except this time out, Harold wants to be a movie star instead of an author. The fight scene finale, while action-packed, owes a lot to the climax of The Kid Brother, too. It also doesn’t help that there isn’t a lot of chemistry between Lloyd and his leading lady Cummings.
That said, there are a couple of funny sequences here that make it worthwhile for die-hard fans of Lloyd. I liked the scene where he gets a job as an extra and ruins take after take with his constant bumbling. Another funny moment finds him trying to retrieve his shoe from a storm drain during a downpour. The best sequence though is the extended dinner party scene where Lloyd inadvertently winds up wearing a magician’s coat and wreaks havoc among the stuffy socialites. These moments help to keep the movie afloat and make up for its occasional detours into the creaky romantic subplot. Also, there’s some pretty impressive camerawork to be found, especially during the scenes set on the studio lot.
Overall, I can’t say I was crazy about Movie Crazy, but there’s enough laughs here for me to give it a marginal recommendation.
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