Safety last is an amusing comedy whose nuts and bolts are the basic archetypes who inhabit it – its main characters are “The Boy” (Harold Lloyd), “The Girl” and “The Pal”. The boy is a young lad from a small town who wants to make it in the city so he can marry his sweetheart. The others are defined relative to him. Among the minor characters is “The Law” and a drunk – again, very self-explanatory. As with a lot of silent films there’s a purity to the storytelling and comedy. They’re stripped down to the fundamentals with no unnecessary flab. It’s timeless, has universal appeal and is funny, but not overly so.
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