Why Worry?

1923 Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Come and See the Enormous Giant, 8ft. 9in. high, who helps Harold Quell a Revolution in Six reels of the cleverest and funniest humor imaginable.

A hypochondriac vacations in the tropics for the fresh air - and finds himself in the middle of a revolution instead.

Harold Lloyd Jobyna Ralston John Aasen Wallace Howe Jim Mason Leo White Gaylord Lloyd Mark Jones William Gillespie Sam Lufkin Lee Phelps Charles Stevenson

Alternative Title

1000:1 = Harold Lloyd

romance family comedy adventure

60 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by <Todd> ★★★½

"Wealthy society idlers with absolutely nothing to... come here to do it."-narration,
Harold, a millionaire hypochondriac, goes to the fictional island of Paradiso to try to get healthy. In reality he is just a spoiled, pill addled, rich kid whose been sent away by a doctor who wants to get away from him. When he gets to Paradiso he finds himself in the middle or a revolution, as opposed to a relaxing vacation. The trip takes some detours like when he has to help real life giant, 8 foot 9 inch John Aasen, get rid of a sore tooth but generally speaking it is sight and physical gags revolving around a rich confident white man getting involved in things that…
Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★½ 12

Naturally, the TotallyNotMexicans in this unnamed banana country are both narcoleptic cactus snoozers and hyperactive riot puppets; the cringe factor inherent in this has been push/pulling at me for a long time now...
What imperialist media said about (TotallyNot)Mexico in the Hearst era is approximately equal to what imperialist media says about Venezuela today; people only know what you tell them.
Review by Josh Larsen ★★★★

Why Worry? may have been meant as a light class comedy in 1923, but nearly 100 years on – after a second world war, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq… - it registers as an incisive and prescient critique of American foreign policy. (A bit more here.)
Review by Krautsalat ★★★★½

Was it Shakespeare or Will Rogers who once said - "A man knoweth not the full joy of responsibility until it leapeth upon him."
Harold Lloyd teams up with bearded giant John Aasen and together they defeat an entire army in a sequence of insane fight scenes. So basically it's the prototype for every Bud Spencer and Terence Hill film.
Review by Owen ★★★½

Hypochondriac Harold goes to the Caribbean for his health and gets embroiled in a coup.
Reasonably funny, although most of the best moments are in the sequence where Harold tries to cure his giant cell mate's toothache and other physical gags revolving around John Aasen.
The battle scenes are actually fairly exciting, while this is hardly The General its definitely a lot closer to that than the average Lloyd film. It's obviously going to have a very stereotyped view of a spanish speaking Caribbean republic but it never becomes unwatchable from that point of view.
Having watched, and generally enjoyed, quite a lot of Lloyd's stuff recently he doesn't really get above the 7/10 for me all that often, there's…
Review by More_Badass ★★★½

The tooth-pulling sequence alone could have earned Why Worry? a 3.5. Thankfully the dynamic between gentle giant “Colosso” and Lloyd’s lackadaisical hypochondriac, as well as the inventive brawls and hilarious gags of the plot’s accidental revolution, also offer a sustained dose of levity and thrills.
Review by Monster_Groupie ★★★★

„The Union Soldiers - In Power so long the Moths are using their Gun-Barrels for Summer-Homes.“
Harold Lloyd and his Kaiju!
It's the Godfather of all Bud Spencer and Terence Hill Films and together, they're defeating a whole Army with a Ton of great Ideas!
The Humor is good but the Fight-Scenes are the real Big Thing here, Guns, Bowling, Canons, brawling and Explosions!
Even Harold himself is on a Rampage, never saw him, beating up so much People at the same Time xD.
Review by Chance ★★★★★

This time around, Harold Lloyd plays against his everyman type, and portrays an obtuse hypochondriac millionaire on a rather adventurous holiday. While he starts off as a pompous fool, Harold quickly grows into the man we all know and love - wily, courageous, charming, and acrobatic. Lord knows that Lloyd has pulled off a lot of hair-raising stunts, and just when I thought I've seen them all, he unloads a whole new arsenal of jaw-dropping feats involving the lovable 7'2" John Aasen. While Why Worry? isn't necessarily politically correct, it's still easily one of my favorite Lloyd films.
Review by Evelyn Rose

This 1923 Harold Lloyd feature has a very promising set-up: Lloyd plays a bumbling hypochondriac who, while vacationing, accidentally foils a colonial American-led overthrow of the republican government of a South American island. Unfortunately, it's not one of his best films, with the political resonance of the plot largely left behind while Lloyd spends interminable minutes trying to pull the aching tooth of his extremely tall companion (the 7'2 John Aasen). The highlight is a novel visual articulation of the villain's colonial fantasy, with the village's market square superimposed into the palm of his hand.
Review by Idk_very_much ★★★★

Why Worry? is basically a 68-minute gag reel, and a good one.
I actually like that there’s so little plot escalation, as most silent comedies don’t have plots good enough to justify their existence anyway. The premise of an oblivious vacationer getting caught up in a local revolution is funny enough, and in Harold Lloyd, the film has a star with plenty of physical comedy chops (including a wide variety of exaggerated facial expressions) to make the most of all the visual gags. John Aasen gives a good supporting performance as well.
Lloyd is a genuinely good all-around actor, as well as a comedian, and his character, a self-centered, rich cad is nonetheless so naive in his mannerisms that we…
Review by joshmatthews ★★★★

Likely many who rate this comedy low have not watched it with children. Mine cackled throughout.
It's a David and Goliath tale, with David teaming up with the gentle giant, 7'2' John Aasen, who pairs so well with Lloyd that I'm surprised there was no sequel or series about these two. Lloyd plays a hypochondriacal rich snob, so full of pills, we are told early on, that he rattles. His heart gives him palpatations, so a pill he must have, every five minutes.
On vacation to the fictional Paradiso, a South American island town so sleepy that cobwebs grow on the beards of its residents, another American, the dastardly Jim Blake, plots a revolution.
Lloyd's glasses character inadvertently gets caught…
Review by Yannie ★★★★

Ok guyz, ce serait-tu possible de me laisser vivre dans un film muet?
Sinon what's up avec la séquence de combat qui ressemble beaucoup trop à celle au début de La Matrice Rechargée (tsé celle dans la cour d'école avec plein d'agents Smith en vieux CGI cheap) pour que ce soit un hasard. Ok, c'est surement un hasard mais quand même. J'veux dire tsé.

Recent reviews

Review by Zombo Com ★★★½

I was dreading watching this as a Mexican. Surprisingly, it was nowhere near as offensive as I had anticipated (although its politics were pretty awful). The writing was generally endearing but (like most of the Keaton features yet he somehow gets a pass while Lloyd does not) it is certainly a product of its time. I am hoping that Lloyd exhausted most of his stereotypes in the inferior shorts he produced and that they do not infect the rest of his feature-length productions like they did in this one. I will find out as a I delve further into his filmography.
Review by ZakkirGanesh

Fictional island is thrown into revolution because of one greedy white American, then revolution is quelled as a way of curing the hypochondria of another white American; South America turned into putty by meddling powers for a laugh. Political subtext so haphazard and half-assed that at this point, I wonder why Lloyd even bothered trying to create such a massive story, when the only real goal here is to have “funny” gags and stunts.
Review by jackbenny39 ★★½

Tall motherfucker!
Review by sweiler ★★★★½

I appreciate the comedy of Harold Lloyd. He, like some other famous silent film stars, helped create movie comedy. In this movie he plays a rich young man who goes to the island country of Paradiso for his health. He is oblivious about everything around him and he doesn't grasp that he is in the middle of a revolution. This may or may not be the first movie with this story line but it has been reproduced with other comedians playing innocents in a foreign country.
What sets this movie apart was the buddy aspect of Harold Lloyd teaming up with John Aasen. As a giant in real life (Over 7 feet tall) Aasen played the part of Colosso. It…
Review by Hatercles

Possible inspiration for Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot?
Review by Boxer_Santaros

Watched while listening to:
''Crocodiles'' by Echo and the Bunnymen
''Jhelli Beam'' by Busdriver
Harold Llloyd's sudden transformation into an unstoppable brawling badass was a little, erm, hard to swallow, but scene after scene of him and his giant friend owning suckas set to my atm favourite record on the whole fucking planet (the Busdriver one) nonetheless had me straight up levitating.
P.S. @Jobyna Ralston , I know you've been dead for over 50 years and all that, but still, please call me 🥺 👉👈
Review by PierceWarburton ★★★★

Had me laughing for most of the runtime and the Wachowski siblings referenced it in Matrix Reloaded. Pretty questionable politics but don't really want to think about any of that.
Review by Idk_very_much ★★★★

Why Worry? is basically a 68-minute gag reel, and a good one.
I actually like that there’s so little plot escalation, as most silent comedies don’t have plots good enough to justify their existence anyway. The premise of an oblivious vacationer getting caught up in a local revolution is funny enough, and in Harold Lloyd, the film has a star with plenty of physical comedy chops (including a wide variety of exaggerated facial expressions) to make the most of all the visual gags. John Aasen gives a good supporting performance as well.
Lloyd is a genuinely good all-around actor, as well as a comedian, and his character, a self-centered, rich cad is nonetheless so naive in his mannerisms that we…
Review by Tomster Monster ★★★½

Good ol’ Harrold Lloyd. Silent comedies are always charming and fun. They usually don’t include much emotional depth, but they always provide a good time. Why Worry? is no exception.
Review by cool sause cool people

The amount of hands that were thrown in this-
Review by Nashville Dude ★★★★

1923
Somewhat slight, perhaps, especially coming on the heels of something as strong as Safety Last! as it does. But this tale of Lloyd - a hypochondriac and bona fide Fancy Lad - who repairs south of the border to recover from his various illnesses, only to find himself in the middle of an armed revolution, end sup being a truly wonderful, winsome piece of work.
The hangout vibes that commence once Lloyd acquires his eight-foot-tall tree trunk of a sidekick are wildly endearing, and the romance between Lloyd and his long-suffering nurse ends up coming across as weirdly sweet (which seems impossible on paper, but there you have it).
Having seen Safety Last! . a couple of times before,…
Review by Raph

Daaamn this one brought back soooooo maby childhood memories