Watch Busy Bodies For Free

the audience applauded

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

For this short subject Hal Roach placed Laurel&Hardy as workers in a sawmill. Just knowing that conjures up in your mind all kinds of sharp cutting tools that given their propensity for trouble you know the boys will be lucky to escape serious injury. So will any and all of the other workers at the sawmill.In fact there is a minute or so of footage in this film where you see men at work doing some serious labor at a sawmill. Also Roach really didn't have them working circular saws or chainsaws. I guess he did not want kids trying these things out at home. You never see them really involved with any of the truly dangerous things.They do however have an interesting climax where poor Ollie do to as usual Stan's bumbling goes through an exhaust the mill has for all the sawdust accumulated. And right at the mouth you see him stuck.Not the best of their shorts, but seeing Ollie going through that exhaust was classic. Might very well have inspired Charlie Chaplin to do the bit with the Little Tramp caught in the machinery in Modern Times.

This Laurel and Hardy short runs just under 20 minutes, and there is so little plot one suspects this was a rush order concocted to meet a deadline. Who cares? This allows the boys to build up a sublime slapstick trashing of Ollie! Has his character ever suffered more? Just about every plank carried by someone at the sawmill is destined to meet Ollie's face; in a great tit for tat said face gets belted several times, only to have a paste brush glued to it by Stan! I was in pleats watching Stan then try to remove the offending item, before finally pulling off the handle in a vice, cutting the brushes down, and shaving Ollie with a plane! A beautifully worked gag that fully illustrates the stars' genius.And it doesn't end there for poor Oliver! Nuff said. This may not have a story but it's very funny, and the gag invention level is superb. What strikes me about L & H is how varied their comedy could be, from this pure slapstick affair to the carefully constructed plots of Sons of The Desert and Our Relations.Marvellous stuff. Best comedians ever for me.

'Busy Bodies' is one of my favorite Laurel & Hardy shorts. In this one they work at a sawmill and you can imagine what can go wrong in a place like that.With some great and very funny scenes, one with A closed window and another one that reminded me of Chaplin's 'Modern Times' (this movie was earlier), make this a great Laurel & Hardy short.

Laurel and Hardy are going to their job at a saw mill that manufactures window frames. However confusion over a stuck window frame and a break down of safe working procedures leads Hardy to become more involved in the manufacturing process than he would have hoped to be.For those who write scenarios for Laurel and Hardy to do their routine within, a factory surely must have not been that hard to think of! In terms of all the stuff that could go wrong it is a real gold mine. This short doesn't use that potential as well as it could, spending a lot of time on a static sequence with a window frame and Hardy's fingers. However the high point is where Hardy falls into machinery.My job involves working with environmental legislation and I was as interested in the factory as I was in the humour! I was in wonder at the way the waste was simply sprayed out of a vent onto a hard standing area. Besides this I was also in awe of the stock footage of men using unguarded saws and pushing bits of wood around blades with it mere inches from their faces! How times have changed for the better.Aside from this professional distraction the film was pretty funny but best once it got more adventurous towards the end. Laurel and Hardy are as good as ever with Hardy taking the brunt of the punishment and thus getting the majority of the laughs.Overall more could have been made of the factory setting as it only really gets imaginative in the final few sequences. Aside from that this served me as a curiosity piece about how manufacturing used to be carried out.