text: This lame Harold Lloyd sound film has nary a laugh in it, and makes one wonder if this Lloyd is even the same one that made all of those delightful and hilarious silents.<br /><br />Lloyd's boyish likability becomes fey and limp when we can hear him talk, and a sluggish, restrained pace replaces the zany antics of his silents. Lloyd plays a young son of a missionary who grows up in China and then finds himself transplanted to contemporary New York City without a clue as to how life outside his Chinese village works. He finds himself an unlikely victor in a mayoral election and quickly draws the ire of all the government organizations because he refuses to look the other way in the face of rampant corruption. When he's framed in an attempt to bring him down, he decides to play just as dirty as everyone else, and stages a fake execution of every crook in NYC as a scare tactic. This darkly satiric ending feels out of place next to everything else in the movie, but it's the only part of the film that comes remotely to life. Everything else is a dull bore.<br /><br />I don't like having to admit that a Harold Lloyd movie fails, because I like him so much, but I don't have a choice with this one.<br /><br />Grade: D