Sunday, May 26, 2013

Silent Sundays: Captain Kidd's Kids (1919)

“Man overboard. Send in the janitor.”

This Silent Sunday film Captain Kidd’s Kids starring Harold Lloyd is the shortest silent film I have seen so far and one of the funniest.
            A Boy (Lloyd) has thrown himself a bachelor party in his apartment the night before he is to be married. He got so drunk he slept in a dresser drawer with a bandage around his head and a block of ice under his pillow. The Girl (Bebe Daniels) he is supposed to marry her mother has heard about how out of hand the party got that she refuses to let her daughter marry him. She is taking the Girl to the Canary Islands. The Boy decides to follow her.
            On the boat the Boy’s butler gets seasick. He makes fun of him mercilessly for it until he gets sick himself. He finds a place to lie down. Not too long after he lays down two men come to try to steal his wallet. The Boy puts up a good fight but he gets tossed overboard. The butler tries to throw a life saving tube and winds up going overboard as well. A dog also somehow gets thrown overboard as well. The two humans and the dog are adrift for twenty-four hours. They come across a pirate ship. The ship is not your typical pirate ship- it is a ship run by women!
            The Boy is very happy at first until the women make him work. He starts off with the task to wash the ship but gives up as soon as the mop is placed in his hands. Then he is sent down to help the cook. He and the cook do not get along after he bugs the poor cook to no end. After they get into a big fight the captain of the ship makes the Boy walk the plank. One of the girls likes him. She goes down to the dungeon and lets the other male prisoners they have caught go so they can try to take over the ship. The women crowd around the Boy and the one girl pirate. They get a rope around his neck and try to hang him.
            The women’s ship was all just a dream. The Boy wakes up right where he fell asleep on. The rope he fell asleep on somehow got wrapped around his neck. He sees the Girl and her mother. He gives the mother a piece of his mind and lets her know that they are going to be married.
            Captain Kidd’s Kids was hilarious from beginning to end. Harold Lloyd was so funny. All the things he did were so slick and so quick. I thought it was genius how at the beginning when the Boy was drunk he had a bandage on his head and a block of ice under his pillow his head hurt so bad. Captain Kidd’s Kids is only twenty-one minutes long and is available to view on Youtube