Strong and Moving!

Absolutely Fantastic

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The boys travel to Scotland because Stanley has been named in the will of a rich relative. When they get there, they find they have inherited a set of bagpipes and a snuff box. Now they are broke and forced to find a way to survive. After a hilarious scene in their hotel room, as they try to cook a fish, they are cast into the street. They mistakenly volunteer for the British army and are sent to India. The British imperialists are running the country. We are treated to racism, as the self-centered Scots are running the country. There are series of fun scenes, particularly those involving Jimmy Finlayson. There is also a hilarious scene where the other soldiers explain what a mirage is. The down side of the story has to do with a silly romance between a young heiress and her simple boyfriend. Not a bad offering for our guys.

Well, half a good Laurel and Hardy movie is better than none. This comedy begins well, as Stan and Ollie visit a small village in Scotland hoping to secure a huge inheritance for Stan (aka "Stanley McLaurel", HA HA HA!) after a dear departed one of his has passed on. The duo are devastated when they find out what the "fortune" is (I'll leave that as a hilarious surprise). From here, the boys are involved in center stage antics as they run out of money and have to make ends meet in a boarding house where they do not disappoint their audience. Then, halfway through, L&H wind up joining the army, the action moves to India, and the comedy team takes a back seat to a very uninteresting love story between other characters. It's a shame, because the first part of the movie is so much fun. To make the situation even more overbearing, the romantic lead man here, played by William Janney, is a real silly geek and unworthy of our attention. **1/2 out of ****

The beginning of Laurel and Hardy's long line of feature films after they and Hal Roach reluctantly stopped making their wonderful short films (Their final short THICKER THAN WATER was made around the same time as this),"Bonnie Scotland" is an oddly contradictory,desultory work in which they start as the principal characters but seemingly end up as providing comic relief to the frankly dreary and hackneyed plot,particularly in the second half.It all starts off amusingly enough,with Stan and Ollie (stowaway convicts from the US,with only a week to serve of their sentences) visiting a Scottish village to see what inheritance Stan will receive after a relative passes away (he assumes the name Sandy MacLaurel!);it turns out to be merely a set of bagpipes and a snuff box.The material here is very funny and well up to standard,with the undoubted highlight being some business with the snuff box resulting in Ollie sneezing an entire river of all it's watery contents (which even by 21st Century expectations,is technically very adroit),and some almost as equally good sequences involving the reading of the will,their residing in a local guest house,and a ingeniously improvised way of cooking a fish in their room.The depiction of the Scottish village is rather endearing and charming,the set being apparently borrowed from a production the previous year,THE LITTLE MINISTER.After such encouraging preliminaries,the film takes a decided turn for the worst when the story travels to India.The scenes in Scotland had only featured the stolid love story section of the plot (built around William Janney and June Lang) only sporadically;it thankfully concentrated more on Laurel and Hardy.When it reverts to India (itself a rather unnecessary continuance to bring into the film),this unfortunately is brought to more prominence and leads to much dialogue,situations and characters which are unfortunately played in a straight,humourless manner.The tedium is made more resistible by the unappealing,maudlin,milksop-type character that Janney has to play,making it more baffling how Ms Lang would find anything attractive in such a person.Production values also take a nosedive from this point on;after a fairly convincing representation of a Scottish village,India is portrayed somewhat artificially by several unremarkable matte shots and a desert fort that comes across as more Californian than anything else.It is always welcome to see James Finlayson alongside Laurel and Hardy,and he has some amusing moments,as does the all too-briefly seen Daphne Pollard.But they and Stan and Ollie themselves come close to being totally sunk by the stiff,colourless actors surrounding them,not to mention the hopelessly banal storyline.Their scenes here seem to be tagged on merely arbitrarily and having no real relevance to the story,but at least they are still funny;several familiar encounters with Fin;a 'mirage' accordion sequence,and a delightful impromptu dance to the tune '100 Pipers' playing in the background,with similarities to a slightly better hybrid in their classic short THE MUSIC BOX (1932).As it is,"Bonnie Scotland" is mostly enjoyable but often afflicted by it's fractured plotting and script.Their best features (SONS OF THE DESERT,WAY OUT WEST,BLOCKHEADS,OUR RELATIONS) were those that built a story round them and was not hindered by straight or romantic sub-plots or other irrelevancies.Had "Bonnie Scotland" not fallen into this trap,it may have been one of their better full-length vehicles.One can only regret the presence of such dispensable elements which undermined their peerless comic partnership.RATING:7 out of 10.

Similar to the way Hollywood spoils almost all comedy films in 2006, the lesson ought to be that spending money isn't what laughs are all about.BONNIE Scotland begins in Scotland but takes a swift plot turn and has the boys soon enough in the Scottish Army in India. Both Scotland and India are no doubt either sunny southern California or inside the Hal Roach studio; but both locations are convincing. All this calls for a pretty big cast for a Laurel & Hardy movie and I'll bet this one cost maybe triple their usual budget. Big problem though: They forgot to include much humor anywhere in the 80 minute running time.Here's the point: Their later film WAY OUT WEST I score a 10, not a 5. That film was entertaining for the whole movie, tenaciously funny; yet the entire action takes place (first) on a trail somewhere out of town (second) in front of a saloon (third) inside the saloon (fourth) outside the stable; a very limited scope yet the film is a comic masterpiece. Money CAN buy you love, but it can't buy laughs.