À la hauteur!

Lloyd's career, like that of Keaton's, was irreparably damaged by the advent of sound, and this film is a fairly good example of why he failed to survive the transition. While the physical comedy is as funny as it was in his silent movies, the verbal comedy is, for Lloyd, one almighty pratfall. He clearly realised he needed something to amend for this shortcoming and, with a hint of desperation, harked backed to Safety Last (1923), one of his greatest silent films, by repeating the entire scaling the outside of a skyscraper sequence.

Lloyd plays a lowly shoe salesman who falls for a woman he believes is the daughter of the wealthy owner of the shoe store he works for but who is actually his secretary. Lloyd inadvertently manages to end up as a stowaway on the boat which his beloved and her boss are travelling and attempts to pass himself off as a wealthy young businessman while trying to avoid the ship's crew.

For most of the film the laughs are pretty strained. To be fair the film isn't particularly bad, but it falls so far below Lloyd's previous standards that you end up believing that it is. The finale in this film is almost as thrilling as the one in Safety Last, but it's just a repeat (without a musical score) and it smacks of desperation on the part of both Lloyd and his studio.