Watch The Tree in a Test Tube For Free

Good concept, poorly executed.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Awesome Movie

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

An aging Laurel and Hardy go back to their days of silent comedy, narrated by comical commentator Pete Smith who helps them identify every day products made out of various types of plastics, and products made out of wood. This is filmed in an early type of color film, not yet perfected with Technicolor. Smith hands this off to another narrator, Lee Vickers, who makes the point of the importance of those various types of plastics and wood in both peace time and war time. It's thus type of educational film that makes knowledge fun, showing a historical combination of movie studio involvement, various ecological preservationalists and the military who was in desperate need of various common materials for their battle needs. Everybody fighting for freedom during the war that everybody pretty much agreed that peace loving countries needed to be in, unfortunately not the last war that the world will be in.

Other than the presence of Laurel&Hardy in it, The Tree In A Test Tube would pass into oblivion that most educational films do. The film is one of the Pete Smith specialties that MGM used to turn out by the dozen, some with humor others that attempted it, but didn't succeed.This is one of them as MGM and Pete Smith thought that the mere presence of Laurel&Hardy would hold the audiences attention as the audience listened to a litany of the many uses that wood has in our daily lives.Maybe if Stan&Ollie did some of their shtick during the short it might be better remembered. As it is it's for Stan&Ollie completists only.

It's surprising how old Laurel and Hardy look in this wartime propaganda short. They were only a few years past the prime of their career, but they looked like that period was about twenty years behind them.Made in their lunch hour according to IMDb's trivia section, you can't help thinking they could have probably found more interesting ways of filling their time. The film consists of Pete Smith's voice telling them all about the different things wood is used for. There must have been a reason the US government felt it was important that the country should know about this, but you have to wonder why. Was it so people would be kinder to wood? Or perhaps they wanted people to stop hoarding it. Whatever the reason, the boredom quotient of the subject matter is counter-balanced by Stan and Ollie's presence - they're definitely the best thing about this short.

This bland historical curio is, as others have also pointed out, really only of any interest at all because it is the only color movie made by the great comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The movie itself, though, is hardly worthy of their talents. Even though it only runs for about five minutes, it quickly becomes boring, and it could have made all its points in a fraction of the time.Most of the movie consists of Stan and Ollie being prompted by a narrator as he points out the many familiar articles that include wood or other tree products, beyond the ones that are obvious. The script gives the two comedians almost no opportunities to do anything. Aside from a couple of relatively amusing gestures and expressions, there's only dead time.The subject surely has some interesting points somewhere, and it's hard to believe that they couldn't have written a much better script if they had tried harder. Laurel and Hardy could make almost anything entertaining, given the chance. But unfortunately they really don't get a chance here, and as a result this movie really has no strengths.