I hope the cast and crew enjoyed doing it, but most of the time I couldn't even tell what was meant to be happening. Most of it isn't needed, and isn't especially fun to watch. I agree that the final stuff in the house drags on. The placement of a still image suggests that the scene has missing segments, but I don't know.
The back-and-forth with the entangled dog leads was particularly tiresome to me not a terrible idea, but something about the direction of it didn't work and it lasted far too long.Īs pointed out by Spudgun above, the dog show felt like it was meant to be a climactic and chaotic set piece, but it ended up somehow truncated, even fragmented, and the film just moved on. Laurel's character attempting to lose the dog in a rubbish bin didn't sit well with me, and some of the slapstick, though very skilled, felt pat and repetitive throughout due to the weakness of the material. I found this film likeable for mainly three moments: Laurel's character puzzling over the discovery of money in his pocket, the sequence where his hat's brim keeps distracting him during his conversation with the woman in the carriage, and the business between him and Hardy on the sofa in the final segment, particularly when he puts his fingers in his ears to avoid being deafened by the gun aimed at his head. I'll try not to suck the life out of all of them. I don't know whether I'll keep up, but I'm looking forward to watching as many L&H films again as possible, so thanks for starting this, RFV. In other words, not sensational and not terrible, but definitely worthy of a watch nearly a century later.
The book excerpt above doesn't really tell us what sort of reception this film got on release, and from that I think we can deduce that it was nothing more than what was par for the course at the time, totally unremarkable and otherwise forgettable, but retrospectively has gained a wonderful historical significance. Nevertheless, we do get a very brief glimpse of the Stan and Ollie of the future in the scene around 20:08, with them both trying to get the gun to fire. They're not in partnership, not a bowler hat in sight, and one of them's the bad guy. To sum up, although they both appear, obviously this isn't really a Laurel and Hardy short as such. I liked the occasional topical gag that popped up in the speech cards, although there were a couple I didn't get. People being shot up the bum is never not funny in black and white movies. In contrast, the bits at the house dragged a bit for me, and nowadays that would have been tightened right up.
I thought they could have made more of the dog show scene, as it looked to be set up for a giant set piece, but it's all over pretty quickly. It feels wrong to see Babe as the baddie, but he managed to be both convincing and funny. That double-exposure effect with the dancing girls near the start seemed a bit ahead of its time. I wasn't expecting the car to hit at the end of that. The street scenes had some good slapstick, and the classic Laurel and Hardy thing of the exact same dreadful thing happening (or nearly happening) a second time having just about recovered from the first time - in this case, the tram - is already present and correct. I can't quite put it into words, but they hadn't really mastered the art of storytelling on the silver screen at this point, and mostly just bolted sketches together. There are basically three 'acts' - the street scenes, the dog show, the bit in the house - and they all flow together but only seem loosely connected, even though there is a logical thread to it all. What a great idea! Shall I kick off? My completely disorganised thoughts, with potential spoilers.
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