Her Boy Friend (1924) User Reviews (3)

A rather ordinary Larry Semon silent comedy

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 3 August 2007]

It's hard to believe that back in the early 1920s, Larry Semon was one of the top movie comics--as he is practically unheard of today. In fact, I think the only reason I found this short on DVD was because like many of Semon's films, his co-star was Oliver Hardy and this film was part of Passport Video's "The Laurel OR Hardy Collection"--films featuring one or the other before they were permanently teamed in 1927.

As far as this comedy goes, it's a pretty typical film for Semon as it features some amazing stunt work (a trademark for his films) but isn't all that funny. It's really odd, but Semon made a few exceptionally funny films but the vast bulk of them I have seen were at best average compared to the genre. In fact, if you compare most of his films to those of Lloyd and Keaton, the Semon films seem much cruder in style and less funny. I think a lot of this is because his style of films were more like Keystone Kops films with all the chases and stunts and they lacked the polish of Keaton and Lloyd.

This film in particular isn't all that special. Apart from a couple amazingly dangerous looking stunts that Semon and his lady friend used to escape Hardy and his evil gang as well as the odd ending that was NOT typical of the genre, this film has very little to set it apart from any other comedy.

For a better Semon film, try finding THE BAKERY--this is Semon at his finest.

Audience gets a rum deal

[hte-trasme · 4/10 · 14 September 2009]

There's nothing especially wrong with this short comedy, except for the main thing that can be wrong with a comedy -- there's just nothing very one funny about it. This is the second Larry Semon film I've seen, and one of a series of shorts in which Semon, one of the most popular comedians of the twenties and now barely remember, starred with Oliver Hardy, before his teaming with Stan Laurel, as his support. As in my previous Semon film ("Frauds and Frenzies"), the comic proves that he is a pretty good comic actor who plays a gormless young man quite effectively, but there's just not very much good material here.

The somewhat unnecessarily complicated scenario has Semon as a junior detective rescuing a beautiful woman who has gone undercover to defeat a ring of rum smugglers. There are some of the creative visual moments that Semon is famous for. I give credit for the stunts on the rigging of a boat, and my favorite moment involved the two detectives looking like cardboard robots as they have "disguised" themselves in shipping crates -- but none of it really made me laugh.

Oliver Hardy pulls out all the stop here, flailing his arms and leering menacingly in his "rough bully" characterization, but he doesn't have too much to do except be menacing. Spencer Bell appears in an now-unpleasant racist sequence as a cowardly dock worker that further decreases the appeal of the film. This short isn't really badly made at all, but of you miss it you aren't missing much.

Defective detectives.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 26 June 2007]

If Larry Semon had made more comedies like 'Her Boy Friend', his career might have lasted longer and ended more happily. Semon's typical screen character was a gormless menial labourer, a stumbling simpleton who came up trumps through dumb luck and accident. In 'Her Boy Friend', amazingly enough, Larry Semon plays a character more typical of silent-film comedian Raymond Griffith: he's well-dressed, cultured, and resourceful. At one point in this film, Semon punches a villain; more usually, he played a coward who only found his courage in the climactic sequence if at all.

Oliver Hardy, not yet teamed with Stan Laurel, did stalwart supporting work in many of Semon's films. Typically, Hardy played the foreman to Semon's dogsbody ... or at any rate someone more respectable than Semon's drudge. In 'Her Boy Friend', Semon's well-dressed and sophisticated appearance is made even more remarkable by contrasting it with Hardy's appearance: cast as an escaped murderer, Hardy is unshaven and filthy here.

Many of Semon's films are marred by unfunny and racist 'gag' sequences featuring a cowardly black man. On this score, sadly, 'Her Boy Friend' is all too typically a Semon movie. There's an unpleasant and unfunny sequence in which Hardy's villain bullies a black man. For once, Hardy plays his role in a Semon film almost dead-earnest; it's a shame that Oliver Hardy didn't get more dramatic roles, as he could have been an excellent character actor.

In this movie, as in several other Semon efforts, the black actor is Spencer Bell. Here, he does his usual scream-and-scarper routine, made slightly more unusual because he dives into water and swims away rather than running. Trust Larry Semon to take an unfunny gag and make it unfunnier; this sequence is undercranked, so that Spencer Bell's cowardly Negro swims at superhuman speed. But, as even the lowliest film-maker knows (or ought to know), undercranking should never be done in shots featuring open water, fire, or smoke: in the undercranked footage, these elements of nature will move unnaturally fast, with unconvincing results. This sequence is blatantly faked, and the obvious fakery removes every last vestige of humour.

'Her Boy Friend' features more impressive sets and production design than usual for a Semon film, and Dorothy Dwan (Semon's off-screen wife) is more attractive than usual here as an undercover detective. Frank Alexander is cast as a character named 'Slim Chance': a bad joke, as Alexander is even bigger and fatter than Oliver Hardy ... in fact, Alexander's mere presence in this film does much to undercut Hardy's effectiveness, since -- for once -- Hardy's not the biggest guy in the movie. I'll rate this weak effort just 4 out of 10, which is also -- in spite of Semon's efforts to vary his formula here -- pretty much where Larry Semon's entire film career should rate.