"[Harold Lloyd] was especially good at putting a very timid, spoiled or brassy young fellow through devastating embarrassments. He went through one of his most uproarious Gethsemanes as a shy country youth courting the nicest girl in town in Grandma's Boy..." - James Agee
According to that reliable font of information, wikipedia, Fred C. Newmeyer's Grandma's Boy was instrumental in pioneering feature-length comedies which "combined gags with character development." At times it feels like three different comedies spliced together into one: a young man nervously courting a beautiful young woman only to repeatedly make a fool out of himself; a flashback to Lloyd's grandfather who captured a Union code for the Confederacy during the Civil War (easily the most entertaining segment of the film); Lloyd going after a dastardly criminal armed with the courage he gained from a mysterious family heirloom said to give bravery to whoever holds it. All of these films work together perfectly well on their own. And though the film can't smooth all the bumps in-between these sections, the film works well as a whole. It's not Lloyd's funniest or most memorable, but it's entertaining enough.
7/10
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