Product: Sin Of Harold Diddlebock (UK PAL Region 0) (1947)
Rating: 2.0
Nice to see Harold again, but come on...
Well, this movie is supposed to be a sequel to Harold's earlier film The Freshman, an American classic. Adding a sequel at all (even a good one) sounds like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Here, this is definitely the case. Harold performs exactly as the script told him to, and does a good job of it, but the script is the problem here. Wasn't it better to part from Harold amidst his triumph in the game and getting the sweet stand-by-your-man girl in The Freshman? It's particularly sad to see that the girl is gone for some reason, he's had a string of romantic missteps all in the same family, and he's been working a miserable dead-end job for the next twenty years, getting more depressed, bent over and threadbare every day of it. Does it make it better even if he does finally have a crazy day that turns things around? He still had to be miserable for twenty years, and it sort of seems to retroactively taint his triumph at the end of The Freshman. I'd rather let that old masterpiece stand alone on it's own merits. A "plus" in seeing this movie is getting to see some old original footage filmed for The Freshman that wasn't used in that other film; a "minus" is having to endure Harold's loud reaction to trying alcohol. I consider myself a very devoted Harold Lloyd fan, but this just isn't one of his best.