I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were comedic geniuses, individually and together, and their partnership was deservedly iconic and one of the best there was. They left behind a large body of work, a vast majority of it being entertaining to classic comedy, at their best they were hilarious and their best efforts were great examples of how to do comedy without being juvenile or distasteful.'The Battle of the Century' is nowhere near classic Laurel and Hardy, later films, short and feature, had stronger chemistry when fully formed and used their considerable talents better. At this point, Laurel was much funnier and more interesting while Hardy in most of the previous outings had too little to do. 'The Battle of the Century' is still worth watching and is an improvement on some of their previous short films, to me it's easily one of their best at this point of their careers and one of the first to feel like a Laurel and Hardy short rather than a short featuring them.Personally would have liked more sly wit that made their later entries better, though the slapstick does entertain and is timed well if a bit too far on the simplicity.The story is a bit busy at times and both slight and sadly incomplete-feeling and fragmented.Laurel however is very funny, and sometimes hilarious. Hardy is at least not wasted, and he does give one of his funniest and most interesting appearances of his pairings with Laurel up to this point and has much more to do in comparison to their previous outings. The chemistry is certainly much more here than in previous outings of theirs, namely because there's more of them together, if still evolving. Support is nice. 'The Battle of the Century' is well worth seeing for the funniest and one of the best pie fight scenes ever.A good deal of the humour is well timed, hugely energetic and very funny, with everything going at a lively pace, and there is a lot of charm and good nature to keep one going, as well as a surprising bizarre one that doesn't feel too much. 'The Battle of the Century' looks quite good still.To conclude, decent with a great scene. 7/10 Bethany Cox

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened a nearly complete nicely restored copy of The Battle of the Century this weekend (6/4/16). Except for the still-missing part of reel one (the scene with the boys and Eugene Palette in the park), the film is now complete. And the pie fight is all that all of us have hoped for all of these years! Admittedly the newly found material is more of the same, but the same is wonderful! The new print was accomplished by Lobster Films with help from MOMA, the Library of Congress and Blackhawk films. I can find no information about a release so let's start a ground swell for a DVD copy. Please? We're begging you!

This is one of the lost films of Laurel and Hardy--or at least partially lost. Today only about half of the film remains--all of the boxing sequence (which is pretty good) and bits and pieces of the giant pie fight. The rest, sadly, appears gone forever, though fans of the team hold out hope--after all, newly discovered bits and pieces have been found of many great supposedly missing or truncated films (such as the great recent find of a longer version of METROPOLIS). Because this film isn't totally intact, it's not fair that anyone should have to give it a numerical score, but IMDb forces this for all reviews. My score of 6 is because I really didn't think much of the pie fight and there just isn't enough of the original film left to get a better score.By the way, according to IMDb, Lou Costello is an extra at ring side. I looked but couldn't really tell he was there. Perhaps he was the guy who caught Hardy at the end of the fight. The problem is that Costello would have been a lot thinner and younger--as he had himself been an amateur boxer about this same time period.As far as pie fights go, this is probably the best and was the inspiration for the one in THE GREAT RACE many years later. Despite people thinking this is a slapstick cliché, there were actually very few pie fights ever shown on film and the few that did occur were rarely as big or crazy as this one--usually just a pie or two (like you'd see in a couple of The Three Stooges' films).Also, and this is an odd one, during the fight scene, you see a pretty lady walking by "The Pink Pup". This is the same place you see featured in THAT'S MY WIFE and THEIR PURPLE MOMENT--two other silent Laurel and Hardy shorts.If you do want to see this ten minute film, it's included in the huge UK DVD Laurel and Hardy collection.

The title of this comedy is based on the situation at the beginning: Stan's boxing match (Ollie is his manager) against Noah Young (the heavy they shared with fellow Hal Roach alumnus Harold Lloyd). In 1927 the American sports loving public was fully aware of what was "the battle of the century". It was a reference to the second boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey (the one that again ended with Tunney's victory, but has lasted in sports controversy because of the notorious "long count" that may have denied Dempsey his victory). The idea of comparing any boxing match that Stan Laurel is in with the likes of one between Tunney and Dempsey is laughable in itself, but it sets the stage here.John McCabe gave a brief description of the boxing match in his biography MR.LAUREL AND MR. HARDY. But seeing it on the recently restored Video, one can appreciate it all the more. Young is ready for real boxing business, but Stan is all weird business (some at the expense of manager Ollie). After about ten minutes Young sees a chance, and lands one punch, and Stan falls down.What adds to the comic beginning is that one sees in the nearby bleachers a dozen or so boxing fans. One of them is young - and thinner than he subsequently looked. It's Lou Costello. I don't know if Costello was working alone in Hollywood at the time, or if he knew someone at Roach's studio, but he gives an interesting little performance in a way he never showed in his own comedies with Bud Abbott. He reacts incredulously at the antics of Stan (and Ollie) in the ring - in fact he acts fairly realistically. It is a curious moment in film history, as it unites Stan and Ollie with half of the film comedy team that slightly eclipsed them in the 1940s, and it presents that half in a quieter manner than as the "baaad boy!".The rest of the film dealt with insurance and pies. Ollie has a real boxing loser, and he has to recoup his financial loss. So he meets Eugene Palette, an insurance salesman, who sells him an accident policy on Stan's life. Now all Ollie has to do is organize some accident. Unfortunate, he's Oliver Hardy, so we know he will keep bungling it (especially when he tries to get Stan to trip on a banana peel). This is the straw that breaks the wrong camel's back. Charlie Hall is delivering pies, and he trips on the peel. He happens to see Ollie trying to hide the tell tale banana peel, so he knows who is responsible. Soon he puts a pie in Hardy's face. But Stan doesn't like that, and he takes a pie and puts it into Hall's face. Soon what McCabe calls "reciprocal destruction" spreads over the street, involving all types of people (including Palette, who tries to use the fight as an opportunity to sell more insurance policies!). The culmination is when Anita Garvin slips on a pie, sitting on it. She does not realize it is a pie, and her embarrassment is priceless.It was their second film - and it was one of their best ones.