The perfect scores here are astounding. The reviewers must be oblivious to what made Laurel and Hardy great, or else they are so besotted with L&H that they give them a 10 just for showing up, like opera fans do for divas past their prime.
This may be the best "feature length" L&H, but that's not saying much. As other reviewers have pointed out -- and been voted down for their perception -- feature-length -- even short feature-length like this -- is too long for L&H. L&H did short subjects, extended jokes, not the overproduced shaggy-dog stories of the feature- length era. MGM had done the distribution from the 20s, but I think they had a hand in replacing the shorts with the feature-length in the mid-30s.
We get a hint of trouble already at the start of the opening credits. Instead of L&H's trademark Cuckoo Song, with screechy clarinets -- primitive notes in keeping with the antics of the shorts -- we get boilerplate orchestration, which continues relentlessly and intrusively throughout the movie, smothering the charm of the interplay between Laurel and Hardy.
We don't see L&H for the first 6 minutes, instead we get a stock dance-hall scene with hoochy-koochy girls and carousing cowboys, serving only as padding. This kind of waste goes on and on. As for the songs, etc. L&H are not a song & dance act, as MGM made them in many of the feature-lengths. Which is to say, more padding.
I was looking forward to seeing a feature-length L&H. After all, if 20 minutes is great, then imagine over an hour! Alas, I discovered that comedy wasn't added, just the runtime. Film historians, critics and Hal Roach himself agree that L&H's decline began when the MGM-labeled feature-lengths replaced the shorts. They're right.
This may be the best "feature length" L&H, but that's not saying much. As other reviewers have pointed out -- and been voted down for their perception -- feature-length -- even short feature-length like this -- is too long for L&H. L&H did short subjects, extended jokes, not the overproduced shaggy-dog stories of the feature- length era. MGM had done the distribution from the 20s, but I think they had a hand in replacing the shorts with the feature-length in the mid-30s.
We get a hint of trouble already at the start of the opening credits. Instead of L&H's trademark Cuckoo Song, with screechy clarinets -- primitive notes in keeping with the antics of the shorts -- we get boilerplate orchestration, which continues relentlessly and intrusively throughout the movie, smothering the charm of the interplay between Laurel and Hardy.
We don't see L&H for the first 6 minutes, instead we get a stock dance-hall scene with hoochy-koochy girls and carousing cowboys, serving only as padding. This kind of waste goes on and on. As for the songs, etc. L&H are not a song & dance act, as MGM made them in many of the feature-lengths. Which is to say, more padding.
I was looking forward to seeing a feature-length L&H. After all, if 20 minutes is great, then imagine over an hour! Alas, I discovered that comedy wasn't added, just the runtime. Film historians, critics and Hal Roach himself agree that L&H's decline began when the MGM-labeled feature-lengths replaced the shorts. They're right.