In the small town of Little Bend, girl shy Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) is an apprentice tailor working for his uncle Jerry Meadows. He studies the female sex academically and writes a how-to book to meet them, "The Secret of Making Love". There are fantasy sequences portraying the different subsets of women. Mary Buckingham is a carefree rich heiress. Her car breaks down and she walks to the nearest train stop in Little Bend. There she runs into Harold who is going to LA trying to sell his book to a publisher. He immediately falls in love with her. Dogs are forbidden on the train and her dog runs away. Harold manages to retrieve the dog and returns it to the beauty. Neither knew that her boyfriend Ronald DeVore plans to propose marriage.
The fantasy sequences are silly to the point of being insulting. There's a possibility that it's a deliberate spoof although the start doesn't set up the satire well. Right before that, the customer and her city cousins are too broad. Even their makeup seem harsh and theatrical. I wish those minor female characters have more realism. It would separate the real world from his imagined world. I actually love the publisher girls making fun of his book which is akin to those pretend-playboys who teaches using insults to get the supermodels. I also wish that Mary is more thankful about her dog immediately although their story is very cute. There is a pleasant flow to their chemistry development but they don't have the heated exchanges which is the hallmark of the standard rom-com formula. This is a sweet simple romance with Harold delivering the comedy and it works. Harold does his action comedy in the third act.
The fantasy sequences are silly to the point of being insulting. There's a possibility that it's a deliberate spoof although the start doesn't set up the satire well. Right before that, the customer and her city cousins are too broad. Even their makeup seem harsh and theatrical. I wish those minor female characters have more realism. It would separate the real world from his imagined world. I actually love the publisher girls making fun of his book which is akin to those pretend-playboys who teaches using insults to get the supermodels. I also wish that Mary is more thankful about her dog immediately although their story is very cute. There is a pleasant flow to their chemistry development but they don't have the heated exchanges which is the hallmark of the standard rom-com formula. This is a sweet simple romance with Harold delivering the comedy and it works. Harold does his action comedy in the third act.