BEFORE: My review might be held up a bit today, because I'm supposed to go out to a craft beer festival this afternoon with my friend Victoria, and I haven't been to one in quite a while. They're fun, but indulging means that after I get home (assuming I get home) there may be a recovery period, like a late afternoon nap. This is part of the reason why I watch my movies very late at night - or perhaps I should say very early in the morning - so they don't interfere with work or other activities. I'll still try to get my review posted today and not tomorrow.
John C. Reilly carries over again from "The Little Hours".
THE PLOT: Laurel and Hardy, the world's most famous comedy duo, attempt to reignite their film careers as they embark on what becomes their swan song - a grueling theatre tour of post-war Britain.
AFTER: Well, the beer festival was a bit of a bust, there weren't as many breweries there as I thought there would be, and then some of them had cider, or mead, or moonshine, so the focus wasn't really on beer. I had a great polish sausage sandwich (it's important to eat food at these things, to absorb the beer) but the pierogies were completely without flavor. Authentic perhaps, because Polish food is based on sad peasant food, but I still expect to be able to taste and enjoy what I eat, silly me. There were also a lot of "scam" booths, offering giveaways or prizes if you just give up all your personal data or agree to get annoying e-mails and texts for the rest of your life. Nice try, but I wasn't THAT drunk. Thankfully we'd bought discount tickets from one of those Groupon-like sites, so I couldn't really complain - if I'd paid full price I might have been pissed.
Before getting into this film about Laurel & Hardy, I think I have to admit that I've (probably) never seen any of their films. I have managed to cover most of the Marx Brothers films during this almost 11-year project, and a few of the Abbott & Costello films I didn't see when I was growing up, but I never took the time to seek out Laurel & Hardy films. But that's part of my process, by watching certain films I'm making choices, and by default then there are other films that I'm NOT watching - like I was reminded this year that I've never seen an Ingmar Bergman film, so now I'm on the lookout for them. TCM ran some of them a few weeks ago and I recorded two of them, so maybe by next year I can put together a chain of those. Same goes for Laurel & Hardy - I'll be looking out for them now.
Unfortunately, this film was little help in clueing me on who Stan and Ollie were during their heyday, because except for the opening sequence and a few flashbacks, the film takes place in 1953, when they hadn't worked together in years, other comedians had taken over in the public eye, and they went on a "revival" tour in Britain, hoping it would lead to setting up a movie deal there. The flashbacks also don't show many of their famous routines, so it makes me wonder if that was a copyright issue. I mean, nobody wants to just see other actors re-making a Laurel & Hardy film, that would be a bit pointless, but they could still give us something other than one dance number.
Fortunately, though, there's a ton of drama in their personal lives, without just re-hashing the work they did together on screen. The flashbacks depict them talking about their wives and ex-wives, and then it's the famous moment when Laurel wanted to demand more money from Hal Roach, and Hardy didn't back him up. Laurel got fired, and had to wait for Hardy's contract to run out so they could start making more films together. Good thing Laurel wasn't bitter about that for decades - oh, wait, he was. I didn't really get the point of the way they introduced Hardy's new partner, like was I supposed to recognize him? I'd never heard of Harry Langdon before, or was the joke that he looked so similar to Stan Laurel? It's like they paused here for a joke with no payoff.
In the later years, the two had to reunite to go on this tour of the U.K., and though they're shown working well together, perhaps there was also a reason why they hadn't seen each other in years, and whatever that was, they were reminded of it by coming back into contact. More drama - then there was Hardy's failing health, and that became a concern when so much of their humor was based on physical comedy, even the stunts on stage were becoming an effort for him. Such is the downside of being the "fat guy" in the comedy pair, and maintaining that image. During the tour, they were writing the script for a planned "Robin Hood" movie, and Hardy seemed like a natural for the Little John role, only the story involved him falling off of a log after battling Robin, and according to this film, that was a constant concern, whether Hardy would be healthy enough to fall off a log - which apparently is not as easy as the famous metaphor suggests.
This concern kicks into high gear when the comedians' wives show up in London - the tour at this point had become a great success, because they'd agreed to do a number of promotional stunts around the country which appeared in newsreels and magazines and generated more interest in their shows. Back in the days before Facebook and Instagram, promoting yourself was a lot of hard work. Oliver Hardy's wife is portrayed as a negative worrier hear, and Stan Laurel's wife as a Russian ex-dancer who can't stop reliving that one film she made for Preston Sturges years ago.
But I think the point of the film is that the world of entertainment is always changing, and if you're lucky enough to be part of it, the ride is going to come to an end one day, no matter what you do. Either you'll age out of the program, gracefully or not, or perhaps the whole game will change and leave you behind. It's happened to the best of them - even the greatest composers like Mozart and Beethoven had their time, but eventually the whole music scene changed and what we now call "classical" music got relegated to one small corner of the industry. This will happen to rock and rap someday too, once enough new genres come along to replace them. There wasn't much of a market for vaudeville performers in the 1950's, and though we'll always have them on film, it's probably not coming back anytime soon. And though I work for people who still animate with pencil on paper, I realize it's a dying medium - but the real trick is knowing whether there might still be some life in an old style, or if not, that it's time to get off the stage.
I was going to nit-pick about Laurel being depicted with a British accent, but I just checked, he was born in England, so that's perfectly fine, I think. Hardy was born in Georgia, U.S., BTW.
Also starring Steve Coogan (last seen in "The Dinner"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Danny Huston (last seen in "Game Night"), Nina Arianda (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Rufus Jones, Joseph Balderrama (last seen in "Spectre"), John Henshaw, Keith MacPherson, Stewart Alexander, Toby Sedgwick, Richard Cant (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Susy Kane, Rebecca Yeo, Danny Scheinmann.
RATING: 6 out of 10 hard-boiled eggs
No comments:
Post a Comment