Happy Daze

1921

Trails Cliff Bowes as he ricochets from a Coney Island shooting gallery to a tycoon’s penthouse, pocketing hearts, pocket watches, and the occasional stick of dynamite, all while pursued by a battalion of bowler-hatted clones who might be debt collectors, jealous husbands, or merely the feral id of the Roaring Twenties. Yet narrative is mere scaffolding; the film’s real engine is tonal whiplash—slapstick one reel, surrealist the next—until the final iris-out consumes the screen like a tiger swallowing its own Technicolor stripes.