One Paragraph Movie Review: The Kid Brother

Two hundred and eighty-third film: The Kid Brother, a 1927 silent film starring Harold Lloyd, a comic genius I’d never heard of who is broadly plonked into the same class as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, with good reason. He plays the youngest son of a rural sheriff, intent on proving himself to his father and older, burlier brothers who look down on him as a wimpy, bespectacled joke. He strives for an hour and a half to nab the bad guy and get the girl, but the plot is hardly the point. This thing is 100% about the relentless, clever stunts, from ingenious new ways to wash and dry clothes and dishes to a melodramatic and brutal fight scene on a sloping shipwreck. It’s slapstick enough to have the activities of a monkey in a sailor suit as a pivotal plot point, and exciting enough that I wanted to stand up and cheer for its heroic climax. Yeah. Pretty good. Three and a half curtain rod bangles out of five.