Safety last ( Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Maxime de Rooij. Viewed at the AFI Fest 2015 in Hollywood.

I never thought I would like a silent movie, but I really enjoyed the movie Safety Last. I never saw a movie with live music, so that was awesome. It was a movie which was going back in the time but with modern music. That was interesting and nice to hear. The music was from the DJ Thomas Golubic, formerly with KCRW. The film includes live instruments and samples by Mocean Worker and songs by The Avalanches, the Beastie Boys, James Brown and Lemon Jelly, among others.

In movies people go to the cinema to watch this kind of films and laughing hard, but now I experienced it by myself. Every time when something funny happens in the movie all the people in the cinema were laughing. It was an awesome experience. It is definitely a movie that people should see.

The film is directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. Together they also directed the movie the freshman. The main character, the boy, is played by Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis plays the girl. Another main character in the film is played by Bill Strother, Noah Young and Westcott Clarkee.

Harold Lloyd who plays the boy goes to the big city. He finds a job as a department store clerk and he needs to leave the girl. The girl thinks he has a big and important job. He puts himself in constant trouble and solves it in the funniest way. His girl is going to find him in the city and he pretends that he is the boss. Then he brainstorms a breathless publicity stunt to draw attention to the store. He is about to climb on the big building. In this part I was so in to the movie. He was climbing up the building and almost fell a lot of times. It felt like I was standing in front of the building and watching him climbing the building.

When the mouse came in his pants he almost fell, it was a hilarious moment. He survived and he made it to the top where his girl is and at the end there is a loving kiss.

It was a movie from back in the days. You can see that back in everything. The movie was in black and white. All the actors wore old fashion clothes for example the women wore a hat, there were old cars on the street and everything was from years ago. Back in the days the movies were silent and therefore this movie was silent as well.

A lot of shots are quicker which made the movie funny. Because you don’t hear someone speaking it is more interesting to see when they accelerate a bit during the movie. Otherwise the movie would have been a little bit boring and this makes it funny and ironic. All the details in the movie make it really cool. All the men on the train going to their work was a nice and funny shot for example.

In the editing the old movie themes came back too, the circles zooming in or going to another shot were perfect because that made it look more from back in the days. Because it was a silent movie there were shots with the important things the actors said in the movie.

Embrace of the serpent is a movie in black and white, the same as in safety last. Both movies are from back in the days but both are so different at the same time. When you see a movie in black and white you immediately think that this is a movie from back in the days.

This film is definitely worth seeing. If you like comedy, if you want to laugh and if you like movies from back in the days, then this movie is definitely something for you.