Block-Heads

It's the last of Laurel & Hardy's old style; in all their subsequent films, the comedy becomes more sophisticated. It's easy to have pity on Babe, especially when you consider how many times Stan has ruined his life, marriages, etc. Of course, it beats me as to why he keeps coming back for more punishment, especially considering the fact that during his service in WWI, Stan was such an idiot that the Captain literally abandoned him in the trenches while the rest hit the battlefield...he probably hoped the Red Baron or someone would kill him off? : ))) Compare that to dropping someone off in one of NYC's worst slums and tell them to find their way out.

Although this movie occasionally looks like a re-tread of their earlier pictures (especially the final scene--which was done exactly the same way earlier by Laurel and Hardy), it is the best they did late in their careers. For the most part (apart from Chump at Oxford), all movies completed after this were either sub-par or even unwatchably bad--as the team got perhaps too old to continue, they made the fateful decision to leave Hal Roach and go to 20th Century Fox (a studio that simply knew NOTHING about comedy in the 1940s). So what did I like about this movie? Well, the opening segment is great--one of the funnier bits they ever did. Stan and Ollie are soldiers in WWI and everyone is getting ready to go over the top (i.e., leave their trenches and charge the German lines). Stan is told by the commanding officer to stay behind and guard the lines until he is relieved. So, of course, twenty years later, he is STILL waiting to be relieved. His uniform is in tatters and he has a stack of empty food cans as high as a mountain. That's cute! Stanley is found and brought back to the states. Naturally, his story makes the newspaper and Ollie discovers that his presumed dead friend is alive and well. So, he goes to the Veteran's Home to get him and bring him home to stay with him and his wife. Where it goes from there I'll leave you to find out yourself. However, it's a cute and well-crafted film that shouldn't be missed by Laurel and Hardy fans or anyone needing a good laugh. FYI--the ending, as I mentioned above, was not very original. The actual ORIGINAL ending for this movie was much darker and funnier but the powers that be at MGM (who bankrolled and distributed Hal Roach's films) nixed the ending and it was re-shot in the boring way. The jealous neighbor who was an avid hunter STILL chased them as he did in the new ending but instead of firing a shot in the air and all the people diving out of the apartments, it dissolves to a scene where the hunter is later relaxing at home and Stan and Ollie's heads are mounted on the wall like trophies among all the other hunting paraphernalia! Then, Ollie gives his old familiar line "well here's another fine mess you've gotten me into" towards Stan. Now THAT'S FUNNY! Too bad it only exists is a few studio stills and is not on the DVD or video copies.

Stan and Oliver serve together in the trenches of WW1 in 1917. When Stan is left behind to guard the trench when Ollie and the rest go over the top the war is won, but no-one tells Stan. 20 years later Stan is still guarding the trench when he is discovered and returned home. Oliver, now completely under the thumb and domesticated, sees Stan in the paper and the two meet up again. However Stan has an immediate effect on the quiet home life of Oliver and his wife. I'm a big fan of Laurel and Hardy and have seen many good shorts of theirs. I have seen a few features and this is not one of their better efforts. It is not that the film isn't funny, but rather that it doesn't quite manage to be consistent over the whole running time. There are moments of genius but really the majority of the film revolves around a running gag about getting up thirteen flights of stairs. It all still works but there is the odd time where it is amusing without being as funny as you'd want it to be. Laurel and Hardy do very well together and are inspired in some of their routines. They play their roles with real confidence and they manage to make even simple jokes be funnier by their delivery. The support cast are pretty unmemorable but still do their stuff as well as required – personally, I'll take any amount of James Finlayson I can get, even if he's limited to `man on stairs'. Overall this is not one of their best feature films as it does feel very stretched, but it does still have plenty of laughs and manages to get 60 minutes and many routines out of quite a simple plot.

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.

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!

The last genuine, hilarious Laurel and Hardy comedy has no plot at all!! Just a series of hilarious gags that come thick and fast.. I would rate this feature(their last for Roach / MGM) as possibly their very best, only Way Out West comes near!! It's such a pity that after this film the decline really set in.. I would recommend Block-Heads to any Laurel and Hardy fan.. that said it is not going to change your mind if you don't like L&H as the boys are wonderfully true to type.. the ending is a reworking of Unaccustomed As We Are (their first sound movie) and in my opinion is much better here.. Don't miss the scene with the great James Finlayson!! If you get the chance to see it.. DON'T MISS IT!!

It's the year 1938 and the war has been over for twenty years. But Stan is still patrolling in the trenches without knowing that the war is over.Stan's good buddy Oliver sees his friend's picture in the paper and goes to the veterans' home to get his buddy. Block-Heads is a hilarious Laurel and Hardy comedy.The movie offers you lots of laughs with the boys.Who could forget the scene where Ollie carries Stannie because he thinks Stan has lost his leg in the war.But Stan has the leg underneath him in the wheelchair.And the scene in the stairs.Block-Heads is one of the best Laurel and Hardy movies.Just watch the movie and it's non-stop laughing from the beginning to the end.

Moviecut—Block-Heads

source: Block-Heads

Block-Heads