This is one of the earliest surviving short comedies in which Harold Lloyd plays what he called his "Glass Character," the bespectacled boy he would portray for the rest of his movie career. Prior to this, Harold was Lonesome Luke, a hobo-like eccentric Lloyd later admitted was a Chaplin imitation in all but costume. Considering how soon Harold made All Aboard after abandoning his former screen persona it's remarkable how quickly he landed on the formula that would fit him like a glove in dozens of comedies to follow.
When we first meet Harold he's in a garden flirting with adorable leading lady Bebe Daniels, but her parents disapprove of him for some unspecified reason, and attempt to force her into a match with Harold's burly rival (played by Harold's frequent screen nemesis Charles Stevenson). They whisk Bebe away on a cruise to Bermuda, "land of the festive onion," but Harold manages to stow away on the ship, where he continues his romantic pursuit while battling the rival.
That's the gist of it, and it's fast-moving and pleasant, sprinkled with cute gags that are typical of Lloyd's films from this period. For instance, there's a scene in Harold's kitchen where we find that his appliances serve double duty: his phone is also a salt shaker, the fridge is a closet, etc. It's nice to see that Harold himself is more agreeable and less aggressive than in some of his other early comedies, which are occasionally as violent as Chaplin's scrappiest Keystones. It's also notable that Harold has abandoned most of the Chaplinesque mannerisms he employed as Luke, although Lloyd's debt to The Little Tramp is clear nonetheless: in June of 1917 Chaplin released his great short comedy The Immigrant, which featured a memorable sequence set on a wildly rocking boat. In the ship's dining hall the rolling of the sea causes some passengers to become ill and rush for the exit. At the height of the action a woman loses her balance, falls to the ground, knocks Charlie over and rolls back and forth helplessly as he tumbles over her. All Aboard, released in November of 1917, also features a sequence set in the dining hall of a wildly rocking boat. In the ship's dining hall the rolling of the sea causes some passengers to become ill and rush for the exit. At the height of the action a woman loses her balance, falls to the ground, knocks Harold over and rolls back and forth helplessly as he tumbles over her. Oh well, I guess if you're going to borrow material you may as well borrow from the best! It would be difficult to find a screen comedian working at this time who didn't owe something to Chaplin. In any case Lloyd would soon be concocting his own gag sequences which owed little or nothing to the competition. What's striking about this cheery little comedy is how fully it anticipates the style and tone of much of Harold's own later, more accomplished work.