The Film Renter and Moving Picture News (Mar-Apr 1923)

April 7; 1923. w Productions. | Week's Pictures. Are You a Failure? A comedy-melodrama with a big river scene—Stirring ee for Lloyd Hughes. . RELEASED BY WALTURDAW. Length, 5,500 feet. Release Date, Sentember, 1923. HE authors of this film—if they had taken the right turning—might have given us a delicious comedy of the effects of a ‘‘ correspondence course.’’ Even as it is, sufficient comedy is introduced to show us what they would have made of that theme. A youth, Oliver Blaine, who has been mothered and molly-coddled by two devoted aunts, finds himself at twenty-two woefully lacking in savoir faire. They go on treating him as a boy who must not be allowed out without a raincoat, goloshes, and ‘‘ gamp.’’ He is the descendant of famous river men who had controlled the great floating log industry in America’s great timber Jand. But Oliver shows no signs of following in their footsteps, and when one day he is lured on to the river to manipulate the logs he makes a mess of the job, and is laughed at by the whole. village. Worse, Phyllis, the daughter of the lumber king, igs an eye-witness of his discomfiture, and, though (Oliver being a ‘‘ personable ’’ lad) she refuses to believe that he is either incompetent or a coward, it is plain that she is anxious about his future. Oliver goes home dejected, and finds awaiting him the first lesson of a correspondence course to which he has subscribed, and which promises to make successes out of failures on the principle of building up character. *‘ What do you Fear Most?”’ the lesson says. ‘‘ Beat it. Conquer it. Force yourself to face it.” Oliver changes. From being a molly-coddle he decides to be a strong character, and the next day in the shop where he works he so distinguishes himself in an effort to sell a lady of Puritanical manners a petticoat, that he is promptly ‘ fired.” He decides to ‘‘ beat it ’’ for pastures new, but as he is leaving his home with his dog and his pares he sees panic grip the town. ‘‘ All hell's poppin’ on the river,”’ a river man tells him. ‘‘ The Jog drive is jammed and if it don’t go out the town will be destroyed. " Oliver hesitates, but suddenly remembers his last correspondence lesson which arrived that morning. ‘‘ What is vour heritage?’’ the course demands. Oliver is descended from a long line of river men. His Heritage! The River. Like a flash he boards a passing motor ear and atrives at the log jam just as ‘' Kill Devil’s '’ men mutiny and refuse to work longer on an impossible situation. Oliver steps into the breach. ‘‘ Como on, you river dogs,’’ he yells, ‘‘ come on. I’ve seen you break some bad jams for my father, will you help me break this one? I’m going to blow up that jam—Will you stick? ”’ The mutineers are with him: ‘‘ Aye, lad, we'll follow yo to hell,’ but at this moment ‘‘ Kill Devil ’’ breaks in with ‘I run this river, you fool,’’ and goes for Oliver’s throat. <A terrific battle results, but Oliver holds his own, and as he is torn apart from the kicking ‘‘ Kill Devil,’’ dynamite is thrust in his hands and he races across the miles of log-jammed river ta where the jam is biggest. Out comes his fuse, he lights it and runs for safety. With a terrific crash and roar the thousand ton jam explodes, washing Oliver down river with it. But, of course, he survives, and the picture ends—inevitably—in his marriage with Phyllis. THE FILM, RENTER & MOVING PICTURE NEWS.‘ 23° SCENE FRoM ‘‘ARE You A FArLUurRe?’”’ ~ A delightful comedy touch appears in one of the final scenes, when the head of the correspondence course pays a visit to Oliver in person, and explains that he is his only pupil. He gives him the last lesson of the course, which is to the effect that ‘‘ faint heart ne’er won fair lady.’’ Oliver acts on the advice, the result being as above. As we have hinted, more might have been made of the humour of correspondence courses. As it is, the result of this one is scarcely convincing, although it is made the occasion of a novel and exciting scene. It is ruther too much to ask us to believe that, on the strength of a few unimpeachable, but fly-blown, exhortations contained in a book of rules on character building, our hero would suddenly have blossomed into a genius of the river and carricd all before him. Besides, it was surely somewhat strange if Oliver could think of dynamite to blow up the jam (the generally accepted njethod, by the way) that ‘‘ Kill Devil,’’ the river king, could not think of it also. The whole story, by being given a melodramatic twist, is too great a concession to the kinema-goers’ alleged passion for ‘‘ heroism,’’ however far-fetched. But Lloyd Hughes, in the part of Oliver, atones for a good deal of the artificiality which pervades the narrative of his daring exploit. Now Wallace Reid is no more, Lloyd Hughes is perhaps the best-looking young man in the American films. In ‘ Are You a Failure? ’’ he carries a weak stor y on his back, and looks no worse. for it. — Madge Bellamy, as Phyllis, though indulged the luxury of innumerable close-ups, simpers through a conventional part, and the rest are’ only fair. Scene From ‘‘On THE HicH Sras.”’