WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS
So were Stan and Ollie, agreeing to appear in this almost laugh-free drawer room farce.
There's no such thing as a bad Laurel and Hardy film of course, though this comes close. Where it falls down is in trying to reach outside the normal scope of an L & H vehicle. Quite shockingly adult for the time hearing Stan telling the tale of a man who made love to another man's wife in front of him is alarming it concerns Ollie kissing a neglected Mae Busch. Unfortunately Busch is encouraged to overstate her lines, while the neglectful husband, Charles Middleton, doesn't really gel either. And seeing the childlike innocence of Laurel and Hardy perverted into snogging married women and getting drunk just doesn't feel right. Like watching Santa Claus doing the wild thing, it's just one of those clashes of two totally separate worlds that jars badly.
The script is also wordy, yet not in a good way. Stripped of their trademark slapstick and with no real physicality to fall back on, the boys struggle gamely with weak, and misconceived, dialogue though even Stan seems a little bit bored of the whole thing. Thankfully it's only twenty minutes long so that when Ollie's driven away in the back of a dustcart you find yourself breathing a sigh of relief.
So were Stan and Ollie, agreeing to appear in this almost laugh-free drawer room farce.
There's no such thing as a bad Laurel and Hardy film of course, though this comes close. Where it falls down is in trying to reach outside the normal scope of an L & H vehicle. Quite shockingly adult for the time hearing Stan telling the tale of a man who made love to another man's wife in front of him is alarming it concerns Ollie kissing a neglected Mae Busch. Unfortunately Busch is encouraged to overstate her lines, while the neglectful husband, Charles Middleton, doesn't really gel either. And seeing the childlike innocence of Laurel and Hardy perverted into snogging married women and getting drunk just doesn't feel right. Like watching Santa Claus doing the wild thing, it's just one of those clashes of two totally separate worlds that jars badly.
The script is also wordy, yet not in a good way. Stripped of their trademark slapstick and with no real physicality to fall back on, the boys struggle gamely with weak, and misconceived, dialogue though even Stan seems a little bit bored of the whole thing. Thankfully it's only twenty minutes long so that when Ollie's driven away in the back of a dustcart you find yourself breathing a sigh of relief.