I just wish I could watch them without thinking, "Gee, that scene reminds me of the really good version they did ten years earlier. I'm glad they're finally being released on DVD in what promises to be a first-class presentation of prints and extras. The Boys fit the classic definition of the True Movie Star, which is someone you want to watch even when they're in a bad film…and like I said, there are moments in all of these. The three movies on this new Laurel and Hardy set are not really lousy, except maybe in comparison to their previous efforts. If he'd lived another ten years, we would have had some really lousy W.C. ![]() Fields didn't despoil his exit from the screen with a lot of unworthy efforts but that was probably because he had the good fortune to die when he did. And after talkies came in - and not because of sound - Buster Keaton made one movie after another that seemed calculated to make us forget what everyone once loved about Buster Keaton. Charlie Chaplin's last films were embarrassments. No great comedian has ever gone out on top. And left it behind when they abandoned the Roach lot. When everyone else was scurrying to figure out how to replace wordless pantomime with wordy banter, Laurel and Hardy found the perfect balance almost from Day One. They - and again, Hardy especially - invented a kind of character comedy on film, perfecting it in the early sound era. Every reaction, every gesture was perfectly modulated for the camera, being just broad enough without being too broad. Both men - but Hardy, especially - always had this perfect sense of scale. By 1927, Roach Studios supervising director Leo McCarey realized that the pair had great comedic rapport, what with Laurels extreme deadpan playing perfectly. Even the good jokes have a heavy-handedness that diminishes them. Their timing, always so superb in earlier films, is just a beat off throughout their films for Fox (and the two they made later for MGM). But also, there is something wrong with Stan and Ollie in the films, and it isn't just that they were getting too old for slapstick. We like to believe that it's the talent that matters, not the employer, but we're all aware that the employer can shackle or misassign the talent so as to handicap it.Ī lot of things went wrong with Laurel and Hardy movies after The Boys left Hal Roach studios, starting with the fact that they didn't have as fine a support team, either in terms of supporting actors or writers, nor did Stan have as much control of scripts as he'd had at Roach. ![]() Most of all though, I find myself fascinated that two comic geniuses could take such a tumble merely because they stopped making movies at a studio over on Washington Boulevard and began filming for one over on Pico. A kindly old widow serves a free meal to the penniless boys but her greedy landlord wants to evict her for non payment of her mortgage, prompting the boys to come to her rescue. There are moments in all three (though fewer of them in The Big Noise) that I can savor. With Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Mary Carr, James Finlayson. I disagree with these folks but in a way, I envy them: They have more Laurel and Hardy movies to enjoy without reservation. ![]() Having said these films are inferior, I am laying myself open to several angry e-mails from Laurel and Hardy buffs who not only like these films but who react to negatives the way you'd react to someone saying your momma was funny-looking and stupid. ![]() Still, the not-best of Laurel and Hardy was a lot better than the best of many other entertainers. The movies are Great Guns, Jitterbugs and The Big Noise, all of which were made for Twentieth-Century Fox in the forties, all of which represent them at their not-best. We now have an Amazon link to pre-order The Laurel & Hardy Giftset which, as explained here, is a new DVD collection of three of the later films of my all-time favorite performers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
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