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Such a frustrating disappointment

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Stan and Ollie hadn't yet become Stan and Ollie. In this one, they're strangers. Stan is a taxi driver who finds himself unwittingly a stowaway on a cruise ship. Ollie is the Purser. Also aboard are a drunken millionaire and a lady con artist whose midget husband poses as a baby and helps her cheat at cards.Various gags follow, some slapstick and some an iota more sophisticated, as when the "baby" entices Stan into shooting craps and uses loaded dice. Do people still shoot craps? It seems a lost form of gambling, just as shooting marbles among kids has disappeared.It's a silent picture and it's interesting to see that Stan's character is far more assertive than it was to become in the next few years. Stan has also developed his "crying face" which seems only half there without the accompanying whine of distress.

Sailors Beware is one of Laurel & Hardy's earlier shorts, and they're not friends in this one. Ollie's a ship's purser with an eye for the ladies while Stan is a taxi driver who gets duped out of his fare and winds up on Ollie's boat. The film is quite funny, although the most memorable aspect is the midget who plays the husband of a villainous vamp. Disguised as a baby throughout, the midget puffs on a cigar and cheats at dice. Weirdest of all, he actually looks like a baby, which definitely lends a surreal quality to the film at times.Stan's persona is almost fully developed by now. The blank gazes at the screen aren't there yet, but the confused tears of distress are, and it's clear his character isn't the brightest of sparks. He's probably not quite as dim as he would later be, but he's getting there. Ollie, meanwhile, displays surprisingly few of the trademark delicacies of movement that would later make him instantly recognisable. The film's still worth a look, anyway. If you like the boys and/or silent comedy, you're sure to be entertained.

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. Millionaires are boarding the steamship Miramar sailing to Monte Carlo, with girl obsessed first mate Purser Cryder (Hardy), second meanest man to keeping an eye out. Boarding the ship are con artist Madame Ritz (Anita Garvin) and midget husband Roger (Harry Earles) posing as a Baby, being driven by cab driver Chester Chaste (Laurel), who unintentionally boards, and as a stowaway has to work to stay aboard. He mucks about with passengers in the play room on a skipping room and with a ball, but he sets off to work. While Ritz goes off to set up a game of bridge and her husband smokes his cigar, the husband of Baroness Behr (Lupe Velez), the Baron (Will Stanton) is very drunk, and when Chester tries to help by putting him back in his room, he keeps getting chucked out. While Purser is trying to assist some women on the stairs, Chester, bringing drinks in, has a money and dice game with "baby" Roger, eventually realising he is using trick dice to always land on 2 and 5. Realising this he chases Roger under and over the board many times before Ritz returns with Purser behind her. At the swimming pool Chester pushes in the rude Baroness, and all the women want to soak him, but end up doing it to Purser. Ritz wants help getting "baby" Roger's pram down the stairs, Chester just pushes it down and Ritz punches him on the nose. During the bridge game, Chester can tell that Roger is helping Ritz out, so he helps one of the other female players win the game, and he ends up punched again. Roger steals some money and hides it in the back of his doll, and Chester wants his dice cash back, and he tosses the doll down a chimney to make sure he gets it. Roger is covered in soot, so Purser tells Chester to go and wash him, and after this is unsuccessful Chester takes the doll of cash and other valuables to Purser and a crowd. In the end, Madame Ritz and Roger are arrested, Chester throws down his has, and that of Captain Bull (Frank Brownlee) showing his quitting of his job, and Purser gets two black eyes from Roger. Filled with good slapstick and all classic comedy you want from a black and white film, it is an enjoyable silent film. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were number 7 on The Comedians' Comedian. Worth watching!

It's not the first Oliver Hardy "tie-twiddle" that's supposed to be in this film, it's the first "camera-look," and even that's not quite true. In 1954, Oliver Hardy gave an interview to John McCabe in which he recounted what he remembered as the first of his long-suffering gazes into the camera. The scene he recalled--being hit in the face by buckets of water immediately after opening a door, and then staring into the camera in disgust--is in this film, although Hardy mistakenly remembered it as being in "Why Girls Love Sailors." He doesn't actually stare into the camera after being hit with the water so much as glance a few times at us. What's interesting is that Stan Laurel is playing directly to the camera throughout this entire film, both in long shots and close ups. With their next film, "Do Detectives Think?," the process is more like what it would be in their mature films, with only Ollie breaking the fourth wall and looking directly into the camera.The credited director of this film was Hal Yates, although he actually only directed one day's worth of retakes (April 18, 1927). I know this to be a fact as I am the author of "Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies" and spent years doing research on the team, locating the precise shooting dates for most of their films. The actual director for most of the filming (April 4 through 14) was Hal Roach. The reason that Fred Guiol is credited as the director on the available DVD is because the producer of that disc created new main titles (they were missing on the available print, which was from a foreign source) and substituted a director credit title from "With Love and Hisses."This is quite an excellent film, with fine support from Anita Garvin and Viola Richard. The production values are surprisingly elaborate, which isn't really apparent in the battered print that's currently available on DVD.