FEET FIRST clearly shows part of the reasons why Harold Lloyd couldn't make it to the Sound era: he just wanted to (literally) repeat his success by recycling old gags that brought him fame, and any viewer who saw those gags in the original silent features just can't help finding them inferior this time around . First of all those gags are more suitable for silent pictures, secondly the thrill wears out if you saw it before. In this film this problem is most noticeable because it is conceptually a sound remake of Safety Last. To be fair, it has its moments-especially when Harold tried to get his breakfast; the newspaper gag worked well, too. But the Harold Horne character is simply not as likeable or as sympathetic as The Boy in Safety Last. Those contrived, saying-ridden dialogue doesn't help, either. The biggest let-down is really what was supposed to be the highlight-the building climbing scene, which is just a reverse of the same scene minus the clock in Safety Last. Technically the climbing is as challenging as in Safety Last, but for viewers it is definitely a lot less thrilling, because we already saw it before, done by the same person. I strongly recommend anyone who gets to see this movie to just press mute to better `enjoy' this sequence, since the so-called sound effect is just Lloyd panting, shouting some ugly racial slurs and serves no other purpose than annoying.
Review of Feet First
