You'll have fun with 'Young Mr. Jazz'

Young Mr. Jazz (1919)

Starring: Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, Bud Jamison, Harry Pollard, Marie Mosquini, and Noah Young

Director: Hal Roach

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An overly protective father (Jamison) and the young couple he is trying to keep apart (Daniels and Lloyd) all end up in a seedy dance club and become the target of muggers and pickpockets.

"Young Mr. Jazz" is a swift-moving comedy populated by amusing characters played by charismatic actors. (In fact, it's so swift-moving that I think the version I watched might be missing an intertitle, just like it was missing its opening title and credits.)

Made toward the end of Bebe Daniels' four-year tenure at the Hal Roach Studios, and her fruitful onscreen partnership with Harold Lloyd, this is about average for their output. There aren't any belly-busting gags, but there aren't any that fall flat either; what viewers get is a solid ten minutes of non-stop entertainment... and that's really all we can ask and expect when it comes right down to it.

Highlights of the film include the way Lloyd performs more like an animated character (as in one that exists in cartoons than in a live-action film) during the beach scenes, the pickpocketing sequences in the dance club, and the massive brawl that breaks out at the end when Lloyd and Daniels come to the rescue of her endangered father. An added nice touch is the openly lecherous attitudes of the father character, leering at women on the beach and later accepting the attentions of a random woman at the  club, even while trying to chase away his daughter's boyfriend. It's a nice bit of characterization that gives Daniels' character every moral right to be "rebellious." (Also, the differences in how Americans dressed at the beach 100 years ago, and how we do it now, are fascinating... at least to me.)

I invite you to take a few minutes to check out "Young Mr. Jazz" right here from this post. Let me know if you liked this film as such as I did.