Girl Shy (1924)

Very well executed

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

In the small town of Little Bend, girl shy Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) is an apprentice tailor working for his uncle Jerry Meadows. He studies the female sex academically and writes a how-to book to meet them, "The Secret of Making Love". There are fantasy sequences portraying the different subsets of women. Mary Buckingham is a carefree rich heiress. Her car breaks down and she walks to the nearest train stop in Little Bend. There she runs into Harold who is going to LA trying to sell his book to a publisher. He immediately falls in love with her. Dogs are forbidden on the train and her dog runs away. Harold manages to retrieve the dog and returns it to the beauty. Neither knew that her boyfriend Ronald DeVore plans to propose marriage.The fantasy sequences are silly to the point of being insulting. There's a possibility that it's a deliberate spoof although the start doesn't set up the satire well. Right before that, the customer and her city cousins are too broad. Even their makeup seem harsh and theatrical. I wish those minor female characters have more realism. It would separate the real world from his imagined world. I actually love the publisher girls making fun of his book which is akin to those pretend-playboys who teaches using insults to get the supermodels. I also wish that Mary is more thankful about her dog immediately although their story is very cute. There is a pleasant flow to their chemistry development but they don't have the heated exchanges which is the hallmark of the standard rom-com formula. This is a sweet simple romance with Harold delivering the comedy and it works. Harold does his action comedy in the third act.

Girl shy review Girl shy is a hysterical silent film by Harold Lloyd. A man who works in a Taylor shop who is desperately awful with girls, longs to be able to talk to them. In modern time this would be a romantic comedy. While he is on the train one day he runs into a girl hiding her dog and to keep the dog hidden he ends up eating a dog biscuit. He hits it off right away with the girl on the train which makes this such a great romantic comedy

Almost 100 years since it was made (93 more exactly), and this film is still full of freshness. There are many comic situations to be seen in it. Also very poetic, it's Harold Lloyd! Full of spectacular and very dangerous scenes. The actors are simply charming, the film moves in great shape. Perhaps the author of the script for "The Graduate", with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, was inspired by this film, the story is somehow similar.

Many black and white silent movies have gone by the way side. As far as appreciation goes in this day and age they deserve a whole lot more than we give them credit for. Mostly because these movies require a lot more effort into consideration of the plot and witty humor. They are so simple at their core though... like this movie for example is so beautifully done because its so innocent. No pretentious special effects or made up stars just a pure scene unedited and raw, giving it a lot of organic texture and feel. The scene where Harold Meadows is writing his book and begins his flashback with the "vampire" woman is absolutely adorable, such delicate lighthearted humor is a breath of fresh air in an entertainment industry beginning to rely on shock value, ratings and financial success. Harold Lloyd is an underrated silent film actor for sure, silent movies would not be complete without the star to make them even more endearing than before and Lloyd certainly articulates his charming warmth and melodramatic expressions to an audience young and old in a way that we can all understand how the character is feeling.