Hot Water

The film starts off strong but the film part goes on for too long. I think this would've been better as two shorts instead of a single film.

Like Chaplin and Keaton before him, Lloyd stars in a smaller-scale feature that can be neatly chopped into three shorts if the exhibitor prefers. It makes for a more generic picture, but apparently the theaters appreciated the flexibility (this was reportedly Lloyd's highest grossing film yet). Anyway, the main set pieces are pretty good, and Josephine Crowell (who'd mostly played more sentimental mothers in things like The Birth of a Nation) makes a fun comedic turn as the bothersome in-law.

Lloyd collaborations with Newmeyer and Taylor had kicked into overdrive by 1924, but Hot Water isn't as good as Safety Last or the other comedy they released that same year (Girl Shy). Lloyd once again plays the likeable boob, only this time he is happily married with in-laws to contend with rather than a struggling man trying to make his mark on the world. As it's strictly a gag picture, there isn't much development, but the scenes where Lloyd thinks his mother in-law is dead are a riot.

This had me in stitches. The part where Harold thinks his mother-in-law is dead is hysterical.