The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I'm told this is the second sound film for Laurel and Hardy. They really look young in this one. They are a couple musicians, trying to get to a gig. They manage to get an upper berth on a train, so both have to sleep in the same bed. As they work their way through the close quarters, they do some troubling things. This time they don't pay the price because other people are mistaken for their actions. The ongoing joke has to do with people ripping up each other's clothes. The boys spend their time trying to locate music that Stan has misplaced and everywhere they go, trouble ensues. We can see the comic genius here. Obviously, they also did many silent features.

I'm a huge fan of Laurel & Hardy but found this to be hard going even though it was only twenty minutes long. It's easy to see that the boys aren't used to - and are uneasy - working with sound, a fact demonstrated by long sequences played out in near total silence. Much of the dialogue between them seems to be improvised and sounds forced and unconvincing.Added to these problems with sound, the routines involved just aren't funny. The sequence in which the boys struggle to prepare for bed in a cramped sleeping berth on a train seem to go one forever (without raising even the ghost of a smile).This has to go down as one of their weakest efforts - and that includes the stuff they did for 20th Century Fox in the forties.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the most famous comedy duo in history, and deservedly so, so I am happy to see any of their films. Stan and Ollie are meeting each other at a train station, they are fiddler players, on their way to Pottsville, and they obviously start off badly with incomprehensible droning from the Stationmaster (Pat Harmon), and dropping all their music sheets before running for the train. As they go to their bed, Stan manages to go into the wrong room, and thinking another man was him, the man rips another man's jacket, then he rips the jacket of another man, and so begins a train full of people ripping each others clothes. Anyway, Stan and Ollie get to their bed, but they obviously complicate getting onto it, and getting undressed to sleep. When they finally do, their station is next up, and it ends with the conclusion that Stan forgot the fiddle, and it ends with Ollie losing his temper and chasing Stan. Also starring Charlie Hall as Train passenger and Silas D. Wilcox as Conductor. Filled with good slapstick and all classic comedy you want from a black and white film, at just over an hour, it is an enjoyable film. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were number 7 on The Comedians' Comedian. Worth watching!

For anyone who doesn't believe that train rides can be a total hassle, see this film, and your views will be sorely changed. Laural And Hardy, two vaudeville stars heading for Pottsville, take us on a 20 minute ride of their life (one most of us wish would never happen). This movie makes me laugh tears right from the opening scenes, as the boys even find boarding the train a hard thing to do (this is one of the best scenes in the short). Next we find them on the train, and they've apparently lost their music for their act, can things get worse? of course! stan, on the way to his berth, walks into a womans room, causing her husband to think someone was looking at her, and a free for all coat fight ensues! The next scenes are what tops the short off... Stan and Ollie spend the last 15 minutes just trying to get in the berth and get settled into it! These last scenes make this short a killer, one to be remembered forever, and even though i am only 18, i will make sure my grandkids watch this when they are my age. A truly great L&H short...for everyone