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. Harold Lloyd plays Harold Van Pelham, a wealthy hypochondriac who travels from California to a sleepy island off the coast of South America for recuperative purposes. Little does he know that the island is in the midst of a revolution. In fact, after arriving, it takes him quite a while to notice because he’s so myopically focused on his own immediate comfort. (One of the gags involves him huffily taking a soldier’s sombrero and sword to fashion a makeshift umbrella.) Once Van Pelham realizes what’s going on and tries to quell the conflict with a sniffy, privileged impertinence, the film moves beyond being a spoof of the ugly American abroad and becomes a silly satire of interventionist, imperialist meddling. Rest assured, though, more straightforward laughs abound, from the witty stunts that showcase Lloyd’s springboard athleticism to the lumbering, comic presence of John Aasen as Colosso, a gigantic islander who becomes Van Pelham’s de facto manservant.
