Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Music Box

Laurel and Hardy decide to start a transport business and their first job is to move a piano up an extremely high flight of stairs. That's really all the plot detail need to be known, and although the movie is as simple as that, the concept is milked by the duo for all its worth resulting in consistently uproarious results. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made a wonderful duo and couldn't have been more different, Stan thin and proper from England and Ollie rotund and slobbish from Georgia. Perhaps it was these differences that helped to make them so funny here. I loved how sometimes you could see the pratfalls coming a mile away and other times they surprised you, both with the same hilarious results. I also love the work of Billy Gilbert as Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen whom the duo come to annoy. Of all the so called comedies I've seen so far this year combined, they do not even begin to approach the belly laughs of this wonderful and hilarious 30 minute film.