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Too many fans seem to be blown away

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

There's nothing rough-edged about this feature film. By this stage of their careers, Laurel and Hardy knew pretty much exactly what they were doing, and it works as well here as anywhere else.It's 1917, World War I, and Hardy and the rest go over the top while Laurel is left behind in the trench to guard his post until relieved. Laurel is forgotten by the Army.Twenty years pass and Laurel sticks to his daily routine, marching back and forth in the trench, throwing his empty bean can on a mountain of empty cans. Finally he's discovered and taken to an Army hospital in Los Angeles, where he winds up squirming into an amputees wheelchair so that it appears that he has lost a leg.Hardy sees Laurel's photo in the newspaper and rushes to the hospital. Seeing Laurel with only one leg, Hardy offers to carry him home and give him a good meal. In the movie's funniest scene, Hardy is hefting the compliant but stupid Laurel along the sidewalk. At one point Hardy drops his hat, falls down trying to retrieve it. Laurel gets to his feet, helps Hardy up, hops back into Hardy's arms, and the trek continues all the way to the car before Hardy realizes what's up.Back at the apartment, the Army theme is dropped and it becomes a familiar tale of Hardy getting mixed up with his own wife and a pretty next-door neighbor who is married to a blustering big game hunter. "I don't bring 'em back alive. I bring 'em back dead. I come back alive!" It's certainly one of their better features.

This is the "boys" - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - it what many consider their last good comedy feature film, doing what they do best: short slapstick routines. It's almost a compilation of them, a series of routines more than a story with a plot. Stan and Ollie, between 45 and 50 years old when they made this film, were Hollywood veterans by now.Frankly, the comedy might be considered a little too corny for today's crowd but, hey, the movie is 70 years old. If you're a fan of these two comedians you should enjoy this film. Anyway, when anyone provides a lot of gags in just under one hour, you'll hit and miss a lot....but some things will always be funny. Some are still clever, too, such as the bit with the window shade being a shadow.You can always count on Ollie being henpecked and Stan being an airhead (he's a WWI soldier who marched in a trench for 20 years not realizing the war is long over). Of course, if you think about it, that premise has more holes in it than the proverbial swiss cheese, but who cares? A good portion of this film involves the simple fact of Ollie and Stan just trying to walk 13 flights up the stairs to Ollie's apartment, and the adventures that happen to them along the way.After watching just 57 minutes of these guys pratfalls and slapstick routines, you'll be exhausted!

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the most famous comedy duo in history, and deservedly so, so I am happy to see any of their films. It starts in the trenches of World War II, and Stan is the soldier left alone to guard, and two decades later (1938), he is still there pacing and eating beans, with no idea the war was over. Fellow soldier Ollie meanwhile is married to his wife (Minna Gombell), and remembers it is their first anniversary, so she plans a meal for the two of them. Ollie does see Stan in the paper, and goes to see him, and looking like his leg is missing, when he's actually sitting on it, he takes pity and takes him home, he does eventually see the leg before they leave. It does take a little while to get upstairs, as they miss the elevator (once out of order), as Ollie gets into a small fight with James Finlayson, and kicks a ball downstairs, but they get in eventually. His wife storms out seeing Stan, and they manage to explode the kitchen with a lit match and gas, with neighbour Mrs. 'Toots' Gilbert (Patricia Ellis) offering to help clean up. Mrs. Hardy returns to the mess, very angry, and Mrs. Gilbert is under a sheet shaped like a chair, before getting a trunk after Mrs. Hardy has left, and Mr. Gilbert (Billy Gilbert) comes in, and seeing his wife in the trunk, wearing pyjamas as well, it ends with them being chased by him and his hunting gun. Filled with wonderful slapstick and all classic comedy you could want from a black and white film, it is an enjoyable film. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Music for Marvin Hatley. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were number 7 on The Comedians' Comedian. Very good!

Producer Hal Roach was reportedly disturbed at the increasingly bizarre endings Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy proposed for their MGM-released features of the mid/late-30s but the comedic results here more than warrant it. The feature begins making you think it will be merely a spoof of a slightly-musty WWI 'returning veteran' melodrama, then enters a strange, deceptive 'midground' number of scenes where the two are supposedly happily reunited yet must almost literally battle each other in an undercurrent of mindslips, oddball personas, switched anonymity, and a willfully ignorant understanding of lethal technology (Stan attempts to back up a loaded dump truck to help Ollie leave a parking space and instead spills a ton of dirt and refuse right on Ollie's head. The results aren't much better when Ollie--unexplainedly--soon allows him to drive the car into his home parking garage.) The film's mise en scene finally settles at the resplendent, multi-leveled apartment complex where Ollie tries to get his previously sweet and accommodating wife to fix a steak "this thick" (Ollie holds his fingers apart several inches to indicate the due process and wealth both men are implicitly entitled to) for them. But once Ollie inadvertently destroys the complex's only elevator and the two begin to create total havoc not only with several other residents but with Oliver's own wife the film is a textbook example of brilliantly refined movie comedic targeting: sweetly gentle optical fades from debris-ridden visual punch lines, well-timed and properly attenuated sound effects (the 'hiss' from Oliver's kitchen gas stove when Stan dimly attempts to try to light it is particularly dangerous sounding), public revealment of the often unglamorous politics of marriage and neighborliness, supposedly innocent bystanders turned cheerleaders of outright societal collapse and hungry for more (this IMDBer was on the floor by the time a totally innocent married woman from across the hall had been stripped of her normal clothes & wearing Ollie's pajamas had to escape her own husband by masquerading as a chair while Stan kept trying to sit on her.) Say what you will about the increasingly poisonous business relationship between Stan and Hal Roach, the film is polished looking, employs several old timers from their silent years, and I found the portrayal of the women understanding and believable, not as quaint (Marx Brothers) or bellicose (W.C. Fields) as some of the competing comedy works of that era. Hadn't seen this one in years but it proves the boys were capable of many more years of contribution with the right administrative and technical support.