Nice effects though.

good back-story, and good acting

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The bespectacled comedian Harold Lloyd was one of America's three premiere silent movie clowns. Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the other two, and they are remembered more than Lloyd. Nevertheless, throughout sheer perseverance, Lloyd carved out a reputation for himself and his comedies that ranks him alongside these two cinematic titans. Mind you, Lloyd made more movies than both Chaplin and Keaton. Primarily, Lloyd had his own trademark physical appearance that compared with Chaplin's 'Little Tramp' and Keaton's stone-faced every man. Lloyd adopted circular spectacles and a straw hat, and he played clean-cut, average guys out to better themselves. In "Girl Shy," Lloyd plays Harold Meadows, an assistant seamstress who is deadly afraid of women. Any time that he finds himself in the company of dames, he lapses into a stutter that only the sound of a whistle can release him. This is just one of the many sight and sound gags that proliferate in this hilarious silent epic. When he isn't sewing, Harold is typing a book about how to make love to women. Each chapter has a different kind of women, i.e., a vamp or a flapper, and his way of winning them over to him. Eventually, Harold finishes the book and leaving the small town of Little Bend, California, and travels by train to Los Angeles. Along the way, he meets a beautiful lady, Mary Buckingham, who is the daughter of a wealthy family, on the train. They become friends during the trip because Mary has a small dog that the train refuses to transport. Before Mary boarded the train, a bystander told her about the railroad's policy of prohibiting the transport of pets. As the train is pulling away from the depot, Mary's small dog jumps off the train. As the train leaves, Harold borrows a passenger's walking cane, snags the little beast by its collar, and hoists him aboard. He smuggles the doggie into the passenger car and gives it to Mary. Unable to find a seat, he winds up sitting next to the heroine because the train went through a curve and tumbled him into the seat next to her. When the conductor approaches them to punch their tickets, Harold quickly sneaks the doggie into his traveling valise. What Harold doesn't know is that an old biddy sitting behind him has pushed his valise aside and put her valise where his was. Consequently, our hero sticks the dog in the old lady's valise. When the pooch starts to bark and arouse the conductor's suspicions, Harold imitates the canine and convinces the conductor that he is barking. Later, when they arrive in Los Angeles, Harold leaves a copy of his manuscript with a publisher and returns to Little Bend. Meantime, a low-life suitor for Mary's affections, Ronald DeVore (Carlton Griffin of "It Happened One Night") proposes to her, and they set a marriage date. Not long afterward, we learn that DeVore is already married and has told his wife that his family refuses to meet her. As a result, she has to wait for him to notify her that his folks are willing to accept her into their clan. Mary wants to see Harold again, and she drives around Little Bend hoping to spot him. DeVore and her break down during one of these trips, and DeVore leaves her with their automobile stuck in the road to find a tow-truck. Nearby the scene of their accident, Mary decides to get out and wander around. She sees water lilies in a creek, steps onto a floating pier, and it bumps into a boat. Moments before as he was sitting in the same boat underneath a bridge that Mary crossed, Harold saw her reflection in the water and imagined that he was dreaming about her. Now, the little platform bumps into Harold's boat, and Mary falls into the boat. Harold's father Jerry Meadows (Richard Daniels of "The White Sheep") spots Harold speaking with Mary as he walks along the road. Naturally, he is surprised to see his son getting chummy with a girl. DeVore shows up moments later, and he isn't amused. He punches out Jerry, and Harold punches him out. Mary and DeVore leave, and Mary says she wants to see him when he comes to town. The next time that Harold comes to Los Angeles, our stuttering protagonist learns that the publisher has no use for his book and plans to send him an official rejection slip. An assistant to the publisher informs him that everybody in the office howled at the antics in Harold's book, and the publisher changes his mind and sends Harold an advance amounting to three thousand dollars. By this time, Harold believes himself to be a loser and discourages Mary about any relationship that they might have had, until he finds out that he is going to be published. Furthermore, he learns to his chagrin that Mary plans to marry DeVore. Heart-broken with grief and jealousy, Harold finds out that DeVore is currently married when his wife comes into his father's sewing shop. Immediately, Harold rushes off to Los Angeles and plans to save Mary from this wolf who is clearly out to get her family's fortune.The finale of "Girl Shy" shows out hero commandeering virtually every mode of transportation to get to the marriage ceremony before it is too late to save Mary. The outlandish antics involved in switching from cars, to horses, to different cars, and then a trolley car highlight this fast and furious race against time that Harold makes. Of course, he arrives on time to rescue Mary. Altogether, "Girl Shy" boasts lots of sight gags that will split your sides and keep you laughing throughout its snappy 87 minute running time.

The premise for this Harold Lloyd vehicle is the oft-used trope of the nice guy who is terribly shy around women, in this case, so much so that he begins stuttering and even trembling. What makes it amusing initially is that he's also an aspiring writer who, of all things, has written a how-to book for other young men called "The Secret of Making Love". The two fantasy sequences he dreams up while writing, for chapters dealing with a woman who is a vampire (vamp) and a flapper, are fantastic, and I wish there could have been more of them. Lloyd is of course cool, confident, and macho in his daydreams, at one point giving the flapper (Judy King) a spanking. In real life he can't even muster the courage to sit down next to a rich young girl who has tried to sneak her dog on a train (Jobyna Ralston). The love story that develops between Lloyd and Ralston is predictable, but sweet. The two of them carry around mementos of their meeting (a box of dog treats for him, and a box of Cracker Jacks for her), pining away for each other. Lloyd endures humiliation in many ways, the most memorable being when an entire office crowd around to laugh over his book, and then mock him mercilessly. These empathy building devices for the 'nice guy' are cliché today, but I found them endearing and interesting, especially since the film is from 1924. There are a few nice gags along the way, but what really makes the film is the madcap journey he takes aboard all manner of vehicles - a car, train, pair of horses, streetcar, motorcycle, etc. towards the end. It's an extended sequence that is brilliant and memorable.

Harold Meadows was an exceptionally well written and well portrayed character, awkward yet determined and fully relatable, with a positive aspect of his personality to mirror each flaw. "Girl Shy" was romantic and hilarious without being a cliché "rom-com," and the plot left plenty of room for surprise and unexpectancy. I did feel there were a few very minor side characters that were not as explained as they should have been that left me confused as to who they were and why they were there. Aside from a minor plot hole that left me questioning as the end of the movie, I enjoyed everything else about the film. The acting was phenomenal, the scene settings were detailed and each one was unique, as if you were following the true ride all the way down to the city, and the chase scene was hilarious and original. "Girl Shy" a unique and adorable movie, and I would absolutely watch this title again given the chance.

I must admit that I completely underestimated this film. Though I had enjoyed the Harold Lloyd features that I'd seen previously, somehow I expected 'Girl Shy (1924)' to be a rather tame slapstick comedy. Never would I have anticipated a film of such staggering comedic brilliance, a romantic tale with enough emotional pangs to please Chaplin, and yet an astonishing climactic action sequence that would make Keaton proud. Harold Lloyd, the oddly-neglected genius of 1920s comedy, here justifies his incredible popularity with silent cinema audiences {in fact, he enjoyed more commercial success than both of his famous contemporaries}. The film was the first to be produced under Lloyd's newly-founded production company, The Harold Lloyd Corporation, but both Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor {who had previously collaborated to direct the legendary 'Safety Last! (1923)'} returned to helm this latest production. 'Girl Shy' is what Lloyd liked to call a "character story," as opposed to a "gag film," though the plot does an exceptional job of retaining room for significant elements of both.'Girl Shy' tells the story of Harold Meadows, a bespectacled young apprentice at a tailor shop who stutters uncontrollably at the sight of a beautiful woman, and yet, ironically, fancies himself experienced enough to write a best-selling instructional manual on how to "make love" with the opposite sex. When Harold unexpectedly meets the girl of his dreams, a modest beauty from a wealthy family, his views on woman suddenly do a somersault, and it's going to take every ounce of his energy to prevent his newfound sweetheart from marrying a coarse and arrogant bigamist. The first half of 'Girl Shy' plays out like a typical silent romantic comedy, with the Harold boarding a train at his hometown of Little Bend to present his completed book to a city publisher. A pretty girl, Mary (Jobyna Ralston), despairs at not being allowed to bring her pet dog aboard, but Harold selflessly aids her in concealing the pooch, even barking frantically and devouring dog biscuits in order to maintain the deception.After the publishers laugh at the ineptitude of his work, Harold dejectedly decides that he's not worthy of such a lovely woman, and, in the film's most heartbreaking sequence, pretends that their entire romance had been nothing but a callous experiment. Mary reluctantly agrees to marry her long-time suitor (Carlton Griffin), a rich and conceited already-married man, and so Harold, upon hearing the announcement, frantically attempts to prevent the wedding. It is then that the film truly kicks into full stride, temporarily forgetting any notions of romance and embarking on a frenetic cross-country excursion that is, without a doubt, one of the most exhilarating sequences of the silent era. Hijacking every known means of locomotion – a car, a horse, a tram, a motorcycle, a horse-and-carriage – Harold storms towards the wedding ceremony with all his might, confronted by every misfortune imaginable and then defeating it with his incredible resourcefulness and quick-thinking. Storming into the wedding like Benjamin Braddock in 'The Graduate (1967),' Harold lifts the bride over his shoulder and escorts her towards a lifetime of happiness. He's certainly earned it.