People are voting emotionally.

A Disappointing Continuation

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There are wonderful plot elements here. The first involves the boys wanting to get employment. When they see a rich man needs a maid and a butler for a big dinner party he hires them (Stan becomes "Agnes" in drag). Of course, the skinny one can't keep away from the booze and gets snockered. The two are shot at as they run away. Now they get a job as street cleaners and end up soaking wet when a water truck driver sprays them just to be mean. As they have their lunch in front of a bank, Stan throws a banana peel. Just at that time, a bank robber, carrying the loot, slips on the peel and is knocked out. The bank president things the boys apprehended him. He want to give them a job, but Ollie points out they have no education. The bank president decides to give them the best; he sends them to Oxford. Of course, they are completely out of their element (dressed as British elementary school boys) and are victimized by the snobby rich kids, spend the night in a hedge maze, and end up in the quarters of the Dean. When Stan is struck on the head by a window as he looks out, the fun really starts. Memorable movie.

This is probably the last consistently funny comedy produced by the duo and, although it's always enjoyable to watch, there's no real stand-out moments as there had been in most of their films of the thirties. Stan's beginning to look a little long in the tooth in his close-ups but he still manages to capture that sweet childlike quality, and there's more evidence of a real friendship between the characters in this film than there were in earlier films.The first 20 minutes, apparently added for its European release, are basically a remake of the duo's silent comedy From Soup to Nuts with a few ideas from Another Fine Mess, and you can pretty much see the join but that doesn't detract from the enjoyment. James Finlayson, the boys classic foil, appears in this early sequence. The action then transfers to Oxford (the film's a parody of Robert Taylor's A Yank at Oxford from the previous year) where the boys find themselves mercilessly teased by the other students. This is where the film is funniest - it's surprising how many laughs can be wrung from two men wandering around a maze for 20 minutes. It's also surprising how well this film stands up to childhood memories of a non-stop hoot; while the laughs might not quite be non-stop, they still came pretty regularly to this old kid...

As mentioned earlier except for BLOCK-HEADS most aficionados might consider A CHUMP AT OXFORD to be the final great Laurel & Hardy feature length comedy. It's main weakness is it's structure - BLOCK-HEADS is a series of disasters rising to a crescendo from Stan to Ollie to everyone around them. A CHUMP is really two or three shorts (all very funny) that are united by the thinnest of plot threads. In fact it can be split into three shorts without difficulty.First there is the repeat of the story from FROM SOUP TO NUTS (then a long forgotten silent short they made in 1928), where they are hired to serve a dinner at Jimmy Finleyson's home one evening and destroy the dinner. The high point is when Stan is told to serve the salad undressed and does so - of course too literally for Finleyson's taste. He chases the two of them out with a rifle (shades of Billy Gilbert in PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES and BLOCK-HEADS). Finn fires his rifle, and then an angry policeman shows up warning him to be careful or he will go to jail - "You could have blown somebody's brains out!" Unfortunately, the policemen turns around and we see that Finn shot a big hole into the cop's pants.Next we see the boys at a new job as street cleaners, and Hardy launches into one of those semi-sensible speeches he gives, "Well we've reached bottom now!...What's wrong with us?" Ollie figures it's a lack of education (partly it is - though it's hard to see how Stan could comprehend any book). They foil a bank robbery (the bank is called the FINLEYSON NATIONAL, which sounds reasonable as Finn was a canny Scotsman usually). As a reward they get their wish - they get the finest education possible at Oxford.The final segment is when they reach Oxford and fall victims to a series of pranks played by the students (led by Peter Cushing - far from his future as Dr. Frankenstein - and Charlie Hall). The best part of this is the business of the boys getting lost (even from each other) in the maze at Oxford, where Ollie is carrying their trunk on his back, and yelling for Stan, who is yelling back, just around the corner! There is also the student dressed as the bogeyman and sitting between Stan and Ollie on the trunk. There is also the boys settling into their rooms (actually the rooms of the Dean of Oxford, Wilfred Lucas), ending with them shooting soda water into what they think is the face of an old goat in a portrait, and end up hitting the original face (Lucas, of course). A battle of the expelled students (the Dean catches them trying to leave his rooms) and the boys ("dirty rotten snitches" Cushing and Hall call them) completes this segment - but introduces us to the biggest change in the history of Laurel & Hardy: Stan's revelation of his "real" personality. A tremendously creative and brilliant comic genius, Stan Laurel (when busy constructing his films) was all serious business - like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Fields, the Marxes, and Lou Costello, his peers. In this mode he was not the nincompoop he played opposite Hardy. He was very serious and intelligent sounding. This is his persona, with a degree of haughtiness, when playing his alter ego, Lord Paddington. Paddington was Oxford's greatest scholar and athlete. He proves the latter by throwing Cushing and the others (unfortunately including Hardy and Lucas) out his window one after another. He also demonstrates his brilliance quickly (all these awards and trophies are on display shortly after his restoration - and worse when his new butler, Ollie, is overwhelmed hearing that Einstein is coming to discuss a problem about the relativity theory that Paddington can settle!). Stan never tried this revelation again - and probably wisely. Stan and Ollie (to work) needs Ollie to be a bit more with it in terms of what the world expects - Stan follows, and upsets the easily toppled Ollie. It is similar to their silent film short, EARLY TO BED, where Ollie becomes a wealthy man about town, tormenting his butler Stan - we don't like this Ollie that much, and approve when Stan starts smashing Ollie's brick-a-bra-ck. The "Paddington" bit was better than the man-about-town Ollie in the earlier film. Wisely, Paddington leaves before the film ends, and Stan returns. We are glad to have him back.

As if Stan Laurel were not sufficiently funny in character, in this film a knock on the head turns Stan into his look-alike Victorian uncle who was one of the most brilliant Oxfordians ever in attendance at the fine school. Unbeknownst to the school rowdies who had elected the famous duo for a hazing, when the knock on the head changed Stanley it also gave him the peculiar ability to wiggle his ears and assume super human strength. As might be imagined he decided to teach the rowdies a lesson and the rest is hilaric history. This flick is a must for any classic American film library.