Mad Wednesday (aka: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock) | Lionel Stander, Rudy Vallee, Al Bridge...

VHS: Mad Wednesday (aka: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock) | Lionel Stander, Rudy Vallee, Al Bridge Frances Ramsden

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Mad Wednesday (aka...

	Mad Wednesday (aka: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock) Lionel Stander, Rudy Vallee, Al Bridge Frances Ramsden Goodtimes Home Video, 1985 average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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MAD WEDNESDAY was the popular re-release title of the film originally entitled THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK (1947). The movie was a cavalcade of hilarity written by Preston Sturges specifically for Harold Lloyd, the great silent screen comedian, to entice him out of retirement. It worked and boy, does this film WORK. The early part of this movie utilizes a bit of silent movie stuff from one of Harold Lloyd's pictures and then segues slowly into this great story. Twenty years after his triumphs as a freshman on the football field, Harold is a mild-mannered clerk who dreams about marrying the girl at the desk down the aisle. But losing his job destroys that dream, and when he finds a particularly potent drink at his local bar, he goes on a very strange and funny rampage (with a lion in tow). Harold meets up with a new friend, Wormy, and together they plot a get-rich scheme to acquire, then sell, a circus to prospective bankers. MAD WEDNESDAY is a crazy, madcap farce which unfolds with cameos and walk-on performances by a huge cast of veteran character actors, silent screen stars and comedians of the day. The dialogue is funny, ridiculous and madcap. MAD WEDNESDAY is such a treat and reminds viewers of frantic & fun of movie making the way it used to be which surely inspired many later works such as ITS A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and RATRACE. The comedy takes its time, builds slowly at first, but soon increases to a frantic pace. By the end of the movie, you'll be howling. MAD WEDNESDAY is a must-see picture!

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Nice to see Harold again, but come on...

Well, this movie is supposed to be a sequel to Harold's earlier film The Freshman, an American classic. Adding a sequel at all (even a good one) sounds like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Here, this is definitely the case. Harold performs exactly as the script told him to, and does a good job of it, but the script is the problem here. Wasn't it better to part from Harold amidst his triumph in the game and getting the sweet stand-by-your-man girl in The Freshman? It's particularly sad to see that the girl is gone for some reason, he's had a string of romantic missteps all in the same family, and he's been working a miserable dead-end job for the next twenty years, getting more depressed, bent over and threadbare every day of it. Does it make it better even if he does finally have a crazy day that turns things around? He still had to be miserable for twenty years, and it sort of seems to retroactively taint his triumph at the end of The Freshman. I'd rather let that old masterpiece stand alone on it's own merits. A "plus" in seeing this movie is getting to see some old original footage filmed for The Freshman that wasn't used in that other film; a "minus" is having to endure Harold's loud reaction to trying alcohol. I consider myself a very devoted Harold Lloyd fan, but this just isn't one of his best.

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