For Heaven's Sake

Among the plethora of silent films I've got sitting on my DVR is a pair of Harold Lloyd quickies, both running a shade under an hour in length. First up is For Heaven's Sake.

Harold Lloyd once again plays The Boy, this time named Harold Manners. He's an extremely wealthy man, as he gets in multiple car crashes in one day, totaling his luxury cars and getting a blurb in the newspaper for it. In addition to being that sort of accident-prone, Harold also accidentally sets fire to a food cart. The only thing is, this particular food cart wasn't being run by a traditional food vendor, but a Brother Paul, who together with his adult daughter Hope (Jobyna Ralston, referred to once again in the credits as The Girl), runs one of those missions in the poor part of town for the down-on-their luck.

Harold doesn't realize this, so he writes a check to cover the damage that he caused, which Brother Paul interprets as a check to support the mission, which he then names in honor of Harold. Harold is none too pleased when he finds out the next day that the mission is named after him, because he doesn't believe in that stuff and certainly doesn't believe in charity for the purpose of getting your name in the paper and looking good. He vows to go down to the mission and give the folks running it a piece of his mind.

But then he meets Hope, and falls in love with her because of how pleasant-looking she is. He then starts helping the mission out in an attempt to get Hope to fall in love with him, too. However, all sorts of mishaps happen, since this is after all a Harold Lloyd silent comedy with all the sight and physical gags.

For Heaven's Sake isn't exactly a bad movie, but in terms of Harold Lloyd's work, there's definitely a lot of his stuff that I prefer. Part of that is that there really isn't all that much of a plot here, just a series of scenes that don't always fit together. (I suppose you could argue the same for a classic like Safety Last!, but there, the framing story works better.) Still, it's Harold Lloyd, and he's always nice enough to watch.