Wonderful character development!

Why so much hype?

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy wreak havoc on the French Foreign Legion in this film. As in most of their films, they played themselves (in some with very funny derivatives of their first or last names). Stan and Ollie had been a team for a dozen years when they made "Flying Deuces." Their best full length films were those produced in their first 13 years as a team at Hal Roach studios. Most viewers wouldn't consider this among their best films, but it is very good. What struck me most about this movie though is that the pair are both clueless throughout most of the film. It's a departure from the usual plot in which Ollie knows at least something about whatever they are encountering, and Stan is the dunce. But here we see a naiveté by both men. They've heard of the Foreign Legion but apparently lack even the least bit of sense about what military service is about. It's a wonderful set up for what happens from then on. Lots of fun, for sure. It's safe to say that neither of them were cut out for any type of military. As I've watched Laurel and Hardy over the years, I've come to appreciate more Oliver Hardy and his role as the straight-man, at least some of the time. This sure turned out to be a winning match that Hal Roach put together in 1927. I was amazed to find how long Hardy had been on the scene and how many productions he had been made. Granted, most were shorts his first 10 years. But, he turned out a phenomenal number. He was in more than 270 shorts and half a dozen films from 1914 until he teamed up with Stan Laurel. He made 145 of those over three years, with 39 in 1914, 47 in 1915 and 59 in 1916. Stand Laurel's career had been much shorter. He started in 1917 and was in 54 shorts before teaming up with Hardy. The better of their films will make modern audiences laugh just as audiences did back in their day.

As the 1930's came to a close, it became apparent that the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy was reaching a turning point in their career. Sometimes they seemed just too old to be doing the same pratfalls that they had done five years before, and yet, fans still couldn't get enough of them. Their days of two reel shorts were long gone, and their feature films, while still relatively short in length, still had funny moments, seemed sometimes forced. For this entry, their first after leaving the Hal Roach studios, they are playing Americans in Paris who decide to enlist in the Foreign Legion so Hardy can get over his unrequited love for French waitress Jean Parker.Of course, as the boys were apt to do, they get into nothing but trouble as they fail to live up to Foreign Legion standards. They end up on laundry and kitchen duty (at the French equivalent of three cents a day!) and decide to desert. This results in a chase between them and the M.P.'s and a wacky flying sequence which results in a visual gag that in retrospective may be funny but is certainly dark in nature.Laurel of course gets some great one-liners, telling Oliver, "I've waited on you with my hands and feet", and Oliver comes back dramatically with a famous quote from "A Tale of Two Cities". There's another dark moment where Laurel accompanies Oliver to the river to drowned himself over his sorrows at loosing Parker and finds out that Oliver insists he end things with him. "After all, if I wasn't with you, how could you explain the reason you look the way you do?", he uses as reasoning. "I wouldn't be there to explain it for you". An amusing moment has the boys breaking into a light dance to "Shine on Harvest Moon", and only in a Foreign Legion jail cell would Stanley find a harp. Then, there's an escape passage which is utilized several times, once with the pursuers getting drunk off the wine the boys accidentally spill into the hole after shooting them with corks. So while this is a mixed bag as far as comic excellence may go, it does have a lot to offer its audience, especially if you can't get enough of the two stars.

Of all the comedy teams in film to date, none have ever surpassed the popular duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Further, no one has ever explained how these two simple comedians from different parts of the world, can go unheralded for years amid all the disastrous maniacal mayhem of the Hal Roach studios, but then once paired, became the most famous team to span generation after generation of audiences. This feature "Flying Deuces" is but one of their many features which has a reoccurring message. Take a life's' event like Oliver being rejected by a woman and what follows is sure to be "another find Mess, you've gotten me into" movie. Halarity is sure to follow when the boys join the Foreign Legion, 'just for a couple of days' so Olie can forget his troubles. Seeing this film as a child, caused me to nearly split a gut. As an adult, I recall that youth and realize, I never got over their wondrous power to make me laugh. Look very carefully and you'll see James Finlayson as the Jailer. His facial expressions and the antics of the boys is what made this film, (like all the rest) an unforgettable Classic. ****

In 1939 - 1940 Laurel & Hardy's long contractual relationship with Hal Roach was coming to an end. The boys actually never had a joint contract with Roach - Stan and Babe had signed up in the 1920s at different times. Stan's contract was ending first, but Babe's would be finished within a year.Most people assume that the three men worked very smoothly together. The decline in their work is ascribed to a lack of sympathy shown them by MGM and 20th Century Fox in the 1940s. This is not quite true. Roach, as a producer, was cost conscious, and if he felt something was over-budget he squawked. This led to collisions with Stan. At least once it harmed a film - the feature "Swiss Miss", where a vital element in the scene involving the rope bridge was dropped. Similar cost cutting may have hurt "Bonnie Scotland" (which has an ending that does not even try to settle a plot problem). As early as 1937 Roach began to look into ending the boys partnership. He tried to create a "Hardy" family series (no pun intended) in which Babe was married to Patsy Kelly, and their son was Spanky MacFarlane. A still photo exists of Babe holding Spanky (both trying to out-stare each other) with Patsy looking somewhat bemused. But nothing came of this. In 1939 Roach produced the film "Zenobia", starring Babe as a small-town physician in the anti-bellum South. A request to help a circus elephant causes him trouble. The owner of the elephant is Harry Langdon, and there were rumors at the time that Roach was toying with a new teaming of Hardy and Langdon.Under the circumstances of Roach's antics, it is just possible that the decision of Stan and Babe to make "The Flying Deuces" with Boris Morros as producer was a counter-move: a type of testing the waters to see if the boys needed Roach to be there in order to make successful comedy features. If so, they were smart to do it. "The Flying Deuces" is not one of their greatest comedies (like "Sons Of The Desert") but it is a very amusing one.Although a story and screenplay is listed as the source of the film, one imagines the real source goes back to a short subject movie made a few years earlier called "Beau Hunks". In that short Babe is broken hearted because the woman he loves has married another man. The woman in question is actress Jean Harlow. Babe insists that he must join the Foreign Legend in order to forget his false love. But he insists Stan go with him. Stan can't quite grasp this - why should he join, as he has no reason to forget anyone. Babe immediately says that it is selfish of Stan not to join his friend in trying to forget. So they leave for North Africa. The rest of the short deals with their hard life as legionnaires (under Commandant Charles Middleton) and the fact that the horrified Hardy keeps finding that every man in the Foreign Legion is there trying to forget Jean Harlow (as is the leader of the Riffs!).As you can see there are elements in "Beau Hunks" that are picked up in "The Flying Deuces". Here, while in Paris, Hardy falls for Jean Parker, but she has a boyfriend. Hardy resolves on suicide in the Seine, and ties a heavy weight to himself AND Stan (who should share his fate, as a good friend). But they are prevented by French Legionaire officer Reginald Gardiner, who convinces them to join the Legion in order to forget the sad affair. They agree (Stan is told to get rid of that thing, promptly unties himself from the weight, and throws it into the Seine, causing Ollie to be pulled in). They show up in North Africa, at a fort run by Charles Middleton, and discover that Gardiner is an officer there too - as is his new wife, Jean Parker!The difference in the two films is that the feature enables more material to be put in. When they are going to their quarters, Stan and Ollie break into a soft shoe and song of "Shine On Harvest Moon" (no doubt influenced by similar moments where they did singing and dancing in "Way Out West" the year before. They get into trouble when they are outraged with the small pay they have unwittingly agreed to by signing up. Their behavior keeps escalating until they end up in the guardhouse, awaiting court martial and probable execution, with Jimmy Finleyson as their jailer. And then they make a final break for freedom at the controls of an airplane. The plane crashes, and (for the only time in their films) one of them dies...temporarily. Earlier they had a discussion on reincarnation, and now they see the wisdom of that theory.It is an extremely amusing film for all the players (Middleton having a royal fit when he reads an insulting message left by Hardy on his desk; Gardiner going ballistic finding the boys in Parker's boudoir with her, and Finleyson unable to understand how the boys as well as nearly twenty soldiers raced into the cell they were locked into - so that he couldn't find them - and then they all reappeared). While not as polished as their best work, it certainly was in the top of their second tier of good feature films (better, anyway, than "Bonnie Scotland").It may have worked for awhile. After "Zenobia" and "The Flying Deuces", Roach did not seem to bring up re-teaming Babe with anyone. The boys made "A Chump At Oxford" and "Saps At Sea" with Roach. Then both contracts were over. Unfortunately, they then signed with MGM and 20th Century Fox, and the long decline began in earnest.