Despite Frank Capra's criticism of this film, often taken as gospel by those who haven't seen it, this is a very funny movie.
Harry Langdon plays a country lad on the brink of adulthood. He's just received his first pair of long trousers (an old rite of manhood) and will soon be hitched to his local sweetie.
Then, while he's biking around (bicycle) he comes upon a fancy car broken down on the road containing a flashy city chick (who is also, unbeknownst to him, a dope smuggler).
Smitten, believing she's fallen for him, he decides to follow her to the big city. But what to do about his girl? He can't break her heart by calling off the marriage. (Spoiler alert) So he decides to lure her into the woods to shoot her. There follows an extremely funny extended scene where he attempts murder again and again. We've seen it all since but it's still funny in the original.
Abandoning his family and fiance Harry runs into one funny problem after another, including an unfriendly crocodile.
Langdon was, at his best, at the bottom of the league including Keaton and Lloyd, but that still leaves him in rarefied company. His short features, IMHO, were his best work. But while he never starred in anything as good as "The General," "The Kid Brother" or "Safety Last," his longer films like "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" or "The Strong Man" aren't to be sneezed at.
Capra's hatred of this film is probably sour grapes as Langdon wanted to take his "innocent" character, which he created before he met Capra, in a different direction. "Long Pants" proved he was right.
Langdon's later movie "Three's a Crowd" was watchable if not as good today because it's a comedy-drama heavy on the schmaltz; but it was still an attempt to try to stretch his character. "Long Pants" contains little schmaltz.
Alas, unlike Keaton's "stone face" (a misnomer but we'll let it stand) or Lloyd's glasses character, Langdon's "innocent" character lacked elasticity. And he wasn't a young man when he left Vaudeville for movies. Makeup can only cover so much. It was only a matter of time before he simply looked too old to play a naif ("Being There" was decades in the future), or before his totally maladroit little man became an annoyance. In any case, though he continued his career in sound and he knew how to work in sound as he'd performed for years in Vaudeville, his days of stardom were over.
Still, "Long Pants," while ahead of its time in many ways (I can only see the Farrelly brothers daring remake it), is very funny and deserves mention with some of the better silent comedies.
Harry Langdon plays a country lad on the brink of adulthood. He's just received his first pair of long trousers (an old rite of manhood) and will soon be hitched to his local sweetie.
Then, while he's biking around (bicycle) he comes upon a fancy car broken down on the road containing a flashy city chick (who is also, unbeknownst to him, a dope smuggler).
Smitten, believing she's fallen for him, he decides to follow her to the big city. But what to do about his girl? He can't break her heart by calling off the marriage. (Spoiler alert) So he decides to lure her into the woods to shoot her. There follows an extremely funny extended scene where he attempts murder again and again. We've seen it all since but it's still funny in the original.
Abandoning his family and fiance Harry runs into one funny problem after another, including an unfriendly crocodile.
Langdon was, at his best, at the bottom of the league including Keaton and Lloyd, but that still leaves him in rarefied company. His short features, IMHO, were his best work. But while he never starred in anything as good as "The General," "The Kid Brother" or "Safety Last," his longer films like "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" or "The Strong Man" aren't to be sneezed at.
Capra's hatred of this film is probably sour grapes as Langdon wanted to take his "innocent" character, which he created before he met Capra, in a different direction. "Long Pants" proved he was right.
Langdon's later movie "Three's a Crowd" was watchable if not as good today because it's a comedy-drama heavy on the schmaltz; but it was still an attempt to try to stretch his character. "Long Pants" contains little schmaltz.
Alas, unlike Keaton's "stone face" (a misnomer but we'll let it stand) or Lloyd's glasses character, Langdon's "innocent" character lacked elasticity. And he wasn't a young man when he left Vaudeville for movies. Makeup can only cover so much. It was only a matter of time before he simply looked too old to play a naif ("Being There" was decades in the future), or before his totally maladroit little man became an annoyance. In any case, though he continued his career in sound and he knew how to work in sound as he'd performed for years in Vaudeville, his days of stardom were over.
Still, "Long Pants," while ahead of its time in many ways (I can only see the Farrelly brothers daring remake it), is very funny and deserves mention with some of the better silent comedies.