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Admirable film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Once again the boys try to fool their wives by feigning illness. This time instead of taking them to Atlantic City, Ollie gets wind of a stag at their lodge and apparently it's in his honor. After convincing Stan that he is not actually sick, they set about preparing for the event. However, it takes half the episode to get Stan's boots off Ollie, who has accidentally put them on. Stan's boots are way too small. Nothing ever works out because the women have to return and the boys are caught red handed. Nevertheless, while the women are away, things are hilarious. We would ask ourselves, if this were a realistic venue, why these guys are so cavalier in their efforts to try to get up to something when these things are doomed.

"Be Big" features our two heroes happily about to go on a vacation to Atlantic City with their wives. The bags are packed, they are on the verge of leaving for the train when the phone rings, for Ollie. It is a lodge brother, telling him about a "surprise stag party" being underway in their honor.I would be perturbed at this last-minute invitation. I also wouldn't want to cut short a vacation trip with my wife. I should mention both Stan and Ollie have good-looking wives in this film, and are presented as having no reason to NOT want this vacation trip.But Ollie decides to go along, so he feigns illness and, despite acting like a wounded moose, convinces his wife and Stan's to take the train as planned. "Stan can stay and take care of me. Tomorrow, I'll feel fine and we can join you then." The wives go along with this non-sense and head off to the train station.The boys now need to change into their hunting outfits for the stag party. Ollie tells Stan to go (across the hall) to get his outfit and they can change together. Ollie is next seen struggling to pull on a boot. With Stan's help, he finally gets it on, only to learn that he has squeezed Stan's boot onto his foot. They now spend several more minutes struggling to take it off.Virtually half of this entire short film deals with the struggles with the one boot on Ollie's right foot. They wind up pulling off curtain rods and causing other havoc in the apartment. The finish, which naturally involves the wives returning and discovering the hoax, has some gunshots which truly destroy the apartment, without, of course, harming any people.The boot antics could have been amusing if trimmed to two minutes or fewer. But around 12 minutes or more of this was so tedious I found myself just wanting it to end. If they had tried different tactics, it might have worked, but the vast majority of the time simply had Stan trying to get into a position to pull the boot off. Way too repetitious to be funny for even one-eighth the length of the bit.This makes it one of the least-funny Laurel and Hardy short I've seen. Sorry to have to give it a 3.

Laurel and Hardy and their wives are due to go away for a trip. However when Hardy's pals call him and tell him of a party in his honour he feigns illness and sends them on ahead of him and Laurel. But making excuses to his wife and getting away with it is only the start of the problem when it comes to actually getting ready to go out.In what seems to be more an exercise in patience rather than a short film, the duo go through the motions in a film that doesn't do them justice when viewed along with other shorts. The plot's high point is a sequence where Hardy tries to get Laurel's boot (which he has mistaken for his own) first onto his foot and then, realising his mistake, off his foot. This is the guts of the film and is easily the funniest bit – but it isn't very good. It goes on too long and, save the great work in delivery, isn't funny enough to carry the film in the way it is expected to.The duo try hard and both Laurel and Hardy do their well known thing to the best of their abilities but the material and the gags simply let them down. As real troopers they do their best and they are still worth watching the short for (I can't help but love Hardy's looks!) but they are not well served. The support cast (the wives) are good despite having little of consequence to do – it is nice to see Laurel and Hardy given wives who look pretty as opposed to battleaxe types (or themselves!)Overall I feel that Laurel and Hardy are always worth watching, but this would be a poor place to start. A short film that goes through the motions with no really good gags or high points.

Not the finest moment for the duo, particularly on a technical level. The direction and editing are all over the place (often using long shots for reactions) and even in the newly restored version the sound quality is muddy.Basic plot seems to read as a try-out for Sons of the Desert, with Stan and Ollie duping their wives so they can go to a stag party. Though in the case of this short they never quite make it there. Most of the slapstick sequences feel oddly laboured and contrived (Ollie at one point taking over twelve minutes trying to get a boot off), not least because they're all backed up by an overstated musical score.I've got a new theory: the funniness of Laurel and Hardy is directly proportional to the length of Stan's hair. In the amusing Chickens Come Home-, made the same year, he sports a large quiff, yet here it's just medium length and not as extreme.Not awful, but Be Big! feels more like a formula filler rather than any great step forward in their career.