The Freshman

I have a few more Harold Lloyd films to watch on the Criterion Channel. The Freshman, from 1925, was one of his most popular, and created a craze for "college" films. Lloyd plays a young fellow off to Tate College, and he desperately wants to be popular. He emulates his hero in a college film, adopting the nickname "Speedy" and dancing a jig every time he introduces himself.

The older students have fun with him, pretending he's popular, but as one bully says, "You are the college boob." In the end, Lloyd saves the day on the football field and learns just to be himself.

As with the other Lloyd films I've seen, The Freshman is amiable and enjoyable, if not a laugh riot. There are a couple of comic set pieces that go on a bit long--one is when he goes out for the football team and is used as a tackling dummy, and another is at a party where his loosely-stitched tuxedo falls apart at inopportune moments.

Mostly The Freshman is interesting for depicting a certain way of life, at least life as it was in the movies. This was a time when college students wore beanies and football (as it is today) was everything. One of the title cards describes Tate as a "football stadium attached to a college." The football scenes were shot at the Rose Bowl.