Review of A Chump at Oxford

"A Chump at Oxford" is an American 1-hour movie from 1940, the earlier days of WWII and this one is a black-and-white sound film that is already over 75 years old, at least in the original as I saw there are also color versions out there. It stars Stan and Ollie, the two silent film greats also not too early in their career as they are at the age of 50 here or slightly under. This one is directed by the very prolific Alfred J. Goulding and cast and crew include several names here that worked with Laurel and Hardy on many other occasions. The duo is (through lucky coincidence) on the campus here, but their fellow Oxford students are not exactly too fond of them. The film gets a bit (too) absurd at times, but it is tolerable, even if the story was not too convincing for me. Luckily the talent of the two guys in the center of it makes up for deficits in other areas and Stan even pulls off nicely the split-personality part. Other than that, it is the usual. Our two heroes carry the film nicely with their interactions with each other and the looks to us, the audience, too. I read there is a version that runs for under 45 minutes or maybe that was just what they initially wanted the film's runtime to be as everything I found was slightly over 60 minutes long. Maybe not my favorite from the duo, but a solid watch still. I give it a thumbs-up and recommend checking it out.