The Freshman is a Harold Lloyd silent football comedy film from 1925 and the first movie I watched in my journey to watch every sports film ever made. Boy, did we start off with a band. I loved this movie so much, I showed it to my best friend, my sister, and my parents. Separately, of course, so I watched it a total of four times. I was immediately derailed from my mission as I had to then seek out other Harold Lloyd films. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of him before. In this film, he stars as Harold Lamb, a freshman in college who is seeking popularity. His attempts at gaining popularity are thwarted by his bad luck and silly handshake and insistence on being called “Speedy”. He does gain the attention of Peggy, played by his frequent costar Jobyna Ralston. Harold joins the football team, where he is used for tackle practice and unbeknownst to him isn’t a real member of the team. Here we see another big celebrity, Pete the Pup. He was the original dog from Hal Roach’s Our Gang series, which is today known as The Little Rascals. Harold is selected to host a dance for the school, wherein my favorite scene takes place. Here our leading man’s tuxedo, being stitched together with placeholder stitches, is falling apart throughout the dance. His tailor is on standby to stitch it back up, leading to one of the funniest scenes in a movie that I’ve ever seen. This scene may sound familiar to you, as it was stolen by writer Clyde Bruckman and used for The Three Stooges. He frequently stole from Harold Lloyd, and Lloyd ended up having to sue him for it. Our film of course has the big football game at the end, and despite not wanting to let Harold onto the field, eventually has no choice but to let him play. I didn’t realise a game of football could be made so funny, but of course Lloyd delivered. The intensity of the shots really added to it as well. The camera person must have been running on the field for these shots and football players run right at the camera. The result is excellent and really puts you into the action in a fun way. Of course Speedy gets to be our hero, and gets the girl too.

I cannot say enough good things about this movie. I enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it to anyone. It being a silent film in no way makes it less engaging or funny or anything else one might expect it to lack because of the nature of the media. I went into it thinking it wouldn’t be very funny because it was so old and that perhaps it would be boring, and I was so happy to be wrong. Harold Lloyd is hilarious and the movie really flew by. All of the comedy stood up to the test of time so well, and the romance was really sweet. His character’s misfortune was funny and not so great that you start to feel bad for him. (See: Christmas Vacation; Chevy Chase just wants to have a nice Christmas and man it ends up bumming me out.) They do a great job with showing rather than telling, so that the intertitle cards are not too frequent. The football scenes were very engaging, which of course was what I came for, and the comedy didn’t stop for the sports which was a lovely surprise. Overall, this movie was an absolute hit in every category and I sincerely doubt it will be topped by subsequent movies for a very long time.