Highly Overrated But Still Good

Better Late Then Never

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Remember all those complicated devices in your high school shop class? If so, like me, they were fascinating to look at, but puzzling as to what they did. Laurel and Hardy are as far removed from my shop teacher as they can be, but they certainly know how to make use of tools and various shop devices that are most likely obsolete today. Oliver is working on a window frame and somehow gets his fingers from both hands stuck in it, giving Laurel the opportunity to twist him around every way he can. Then, some sort of hard bristle brush gets embedded in Oliver's face, turning Laurel into Sweeney Todd. It's the first time I've ever seen a wood plane used as a razor! Oliver ends up on a not so fun ride that is an exercise in total hilarity. This is one of those shorts where you may need to wear depends to get through. An absolute riot!

BUSY BODIES is another of Laurel & Hardy's best shorts. In fact, the shorts which featured the pair as handymen inevitably provided the best backdrops for their unique brand of slapstick-heavy comedy; check out THE MUSIC BOX and THE FINISHING TOUCH for more of the same.This one's well remembered as the one set in the sawmill, as the accident-prone twosome get up to all sorts of mischief. The short almost writes itself with a string of outrageously funny gags in which the pair fall foul of various tools as they attempt to carry out their work. At one stage, BUSY BODIES becomes a live-action cartoon when Ollie is sucked into a chute and we see his body being thrown around; great special effects.Unsurprisingly, both actors are at the top of their game here and watching their interplay is funny in itself. The short as a whole feels fresh and inventive and it's the sort of thing I could watch again immediately upon finishing it, it's that good. Check it out!

Laurel and Hardy are going to their job at a saw mill that manufactures window frames. However confusion over a stuck window frame and a break down of safe working procedures leads Hardy to become more involved in the manufacturing process than he would have hoped to be.For those who write scenarios for Laurel and Hardy to do their routine within, a factory surely must have not been that hard to think of! In terms of all the stuff that could go wrong it is a real gold mine. This short doesn't use that potential as well as it could, spending a lot of time on a static sequence with a window frame and Hardy's fingers. However the high point is where Hardy falls into machinery.My job involves working with environmental legislation and I was as interested in the factory as I was in the humour! I was in wonder at the way the waste was simply sprayed out of a vent onto a hard standing area. Besides this I was also in awe of the stock footage of men using unguarded saws and pushing bits of wood around blades with it mere inches from their faces! How times have changed for the better.Aside from this professional distraction the film was pretty funny but best once it got more adventurous towards the end. Laurel and Hardy are as good as ever with Hardy taking the brunt of the punishment and thus getting the majority of the laughs.Overall more could have been made of the factory setting as it only really gets imaginative in the final few sequences. Aside from that this served me as a curiosity piece about how manufacturing used to be carried out.

One thing that puzzles me is how many of these L&H shorts feature absolutely no plot but I never seem to notice this because I`m too busy laughing . BUSY BODIES is set in a sawmill but that`s it , there`s no central plot , just a series of incidents which show the genius of Stan and Ollie .This is certainly one of the best shorts because it showcases the duo at their most typical , Ollie gets gets hit over the head by falling objects while Stan turns to the camera and shrugs . There`s also a fight scene that had me in stiches , okay I knew what the pay off was going to be as soon as Stan said " Cigar " but you`d need to be crippled by clinical depression not to surpress a smile at this A seventy year old black and white film with no plot and it made me laugh . I can`t think of a better compliment