An early and amusing Semon from the days before his budgets and ego ballooned out of control. He is the utterly inept janitor in an office building, where an inventor is busy cutting a deal for a new sort of -- well, it looks like it might be a racing car, but it might be a zeppelin. But when Larry is not wielding a broom and forcing everyone into either ducking or taking a pratfall, or dunking an ice cube into the water cooler like an over-sized tea bag, he is fouling up industrial espionage. There is is a lovely thrill comedy bit with Madge Kirby at risk.
As with Semon's other comedies of this period, he is the star but not the whole show, and that produces more varied and greater belly laughs. In this period his camera work was more interesting than his competitors, his gags as funny or funnier and although his story construction was no thing of beauty, it served as a fine framework for the gags.
What happened to Semon later? But 1922, his shorts had gotten out of control. Was it wounded vanity as Chaplin moved ahead, making more money and getting more public acclaim? Had he simply reached the limit of his gag construction without the ability to make his works truly cinematic? Did he simply fail to understand the lessons of Chaplin, Lloyd and Fairbanks, that the public had to care about the character? I don't know. But this is a good comedy. Enjoy it for that.
