Yowza! If anyone who loves Laurel and Hardy can watch this movie and feel good about it, you're a better person than me! This movie, while a great attempt at 'imitating' Laurel and Hardy through appearance, sound and routine, falls very short of honoring them, or even being a movie of any substance. I blame Larry Harmon. Dialogue is torn from old L+H movies and planted in unrealistically, the plot is muddled with useless characterization of the other needless co-stars, Pinchot's accent was bizarre for Stan, and while Sartain did an excellent job with Ollie's accent, he tried too hard to create the wonderful mix that was Mr. Hardy. Where was a (good) musical number? Editing is choppy, acting is stiff, lines are horrid, physics are -implausable- (although perhaps they were TRYING to give it that feel of cheap sets?), and overall it's a terrible thing to witness. It's even more painful to watch than ATOLL K, where the legendary duo did their last film in awful 1950's era writing and photography. Do yourself a favor and watch as much of the ORIGINAL Laurel and Hardy films as you can, and learn how things WERE. You know what a MAGNATE is, don't you? Stan Laurel did not perpetually reply with semi-moronic quips at every sentence. I pity anyone who thinks that THIS was a decent update/honor of the boys. Where was THE CLASSIC THEME SONG?!? Why ruin 'Here's another fine mess'? Why skip 'any the wiser'? Why was there a pointless gaggle of co-stars?! WHY MISS GULCH FROM THE WIZARD OF OZ???? WHY MUST LARRY HARMON BE IN IT? WHY BOZO!? And did THE LEARNING CHANNEL help fund the thing?I mean, really. Fart jokes, for God's sake.FART JOKES.
... View MoreHowever, perhaps I'm nitpicking, but in my opinion the "modern day" setting doesn't really seem to work in some respects. For a start, Stan and Ollie still wear their 30s/40s style attire - how many people do you catch wearing bowler hats in this day and age? At times, they seemed almost to be living in a bizarre time warp, which didn't really make sense.Overall though, this is good, old-fashioned slapstick comedy, well in the spirit of the real Stan and Ollie. It's nice to see such innocent laughs for a change, with the kinds of films we're seeing most of the time today, this is a rare treat for the family!
... View MoreMaybe I am just too much of a Laurel & Hardy fan, but i found this thing on HBO and thought I was hallucinating. This was awful!!! Has Bronson Pinchot's career sunk so low that he must do this? A Stan Laurel impression???? Yikes! And Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham doing a small burn as these lame Laurel & Hardy copycats do their shtick was almost too painful to watch. All this movie emphasized was how GREAT and UNIQUE the original men were. This movie should never have been made. For goodness sakes, if you want to watch them, rent their classic movies, Music Box, Sons Of the Desert, Brats, etc.
... View MoreI have seen most, if not all of the Laurel & Hardy classic films. I have always enjoyed there comical stupidly, even after watching it over and over again. This new film attempts to bring back the classic with two new actors who resemble both Laurel & Hardy, however fails miserably for various reasons. One of which is how out of place their cloths are (still early 20th century) however are both portrayed in the 90's setting. Some of the former dialogue was brought back, however it also fails miserably to come close to the classic series. This film could very well be the worst film I have ever seen and should be pulled off the shelf and locked away forever. The real Laurel & Hardy are surly spinning in their graves at such a bad imitation.
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