Thelma Todd's last film before she was murdered.... She is, unfortunately, edited out of this film and I can only think it is because she was painted in a comically ridiculous light. We do see her miming badly to a song at the beginning. I assume the footage that was shot would have been dis-respectful to her memory, which follows that this film is a bit of a joke. Or it was a bad decision to edit her out.Stan and Ollie are part of a band of gypsies and make a living as pick-pockets. Ollies's wife (Mae Busch) is having a relationship with another suitor and runs off with him, leaving Stan and Ollie to look after the young girl that she has previously kidnapped. The young girl is actually the daughter of a wealthy Count and when the group of thieving gypsies return to the scene of the crime 12 years later, the truth is revealed.Mae Busch is excellent in all of her screen time and the scenes where Ollie witnesses her unfaithfulness are very funny, especially as she tells him off instead of the other way round! Laurel & Hardy are always great to watch....and this film is better than their other effort that was released this year - "Our Relations". It contains scenes that are L & H contrived interwoven between pointless operetta singy la-la-la crap. Overall, it's enjoyable - only just.

I have never understood the lambasting `Bohemian Girl' has received. It is not the best L&H (I leave that for others to debate, but the lean is towards `Way Out West' or `Sons of the Desert'), but it is far, far from their worst.The operetta background seemed to work as well for Stan and Ollie as the opera did for the Marxes (`A Night at the Opera'), Mae West (`Goin' to Town'), and the Stooges (`Microphonies'), giving them something different and deliberately starchy to play against.It is a shame that Thelma Todd died just about the time BG was released. Stan was said to have felt it inappropriate to show her in such a big part with her lurid death – which many claim was a mob-related murder – still heading the headlines. The Hollywood hush-hush surrounding it may have also contributed to its excising…and the sadness was only worsened by its occurrence during the Christmas season and the arrival by mail of presents to various friends (including Stan) after her body had been found. Roach himself (with the bigwigs in his corner) was said to have helped head off the DA's second inquest after Thelma's attorney had protested the suicide verdict…another reason, perhaps, behind her severely edited and retooled role. Who begs for a dark cloud?But how WELCOME to see Mae Busch back! She always worked especially well with the team and gives that extra boost to Ollie in particular that one always got from a Maggie Dumont, Jan Duggan, or Symona Boniface. Mae could play an absolute bitch, and you still loved her. The added reunion with Jimmy Finlayson was great (`Oh, my GOOD eye!' – an insider's joke that kills me every time), and we have the bonus of Our Gang's Darla as the adopted Arline. Sweet, without being cloying.One might decry songs such as `The Heart Bow'd Down by Weight of Woe,' but it's an operetta, folks. There's going to be singing.And with routines like `the eyes are the windows to your soul'; the fingers bit in the bar; the odd wrap-up gag; the wine bottling; Stan's bass/soprano switch; his search for Ollie's money; Darla's bedtime prayer; the butter churn…even something as simple as Ollie claiming to be leaving for a zither lesson and then miming it with his fingers (whereupon Stan suddenly gets it – `Oh!')…it's all great! What more could one want? They couldn't re-film `Sons of the Desert' every year! Give this baby a chance!None of the latter day Fox-MGM movies can touch it; not even the best of `Jitterbugs.' `The Flying Deuces,' unfortunately so long in public domain that it appears one is watching it through a pillowcase, is pretty good, but this one seems warmer and cinematically superior. I prefer BG to some of its contemporaries, too. I mean, take `Bonnie Scotland,' with several good scenes sandwiched between the lachrymose bits with the whiney lead. Then look at the highly Roach-edited `Swiss Miss,' which butchers a L&H song and makes us sit through Della Lind and Walter Woolf King (who is decent here, but a far cry from the love-to-hate-him Lasparri (sic))…give me a dubbed Thelma and a nice helping of Mae any day.Why complain and deride it? It's a pleasant evening, with lots of merriment. And it's Stan and Ollie in their prime, even if not in the best of their films. We should be so lucky as to have another BG filming in Hollywood today. Go jump on `The Big Noise' or `Air Raid Wardens,' if you just want to gripe.But if you want some fun, pop BG into your VCR and prepare to laugh.

What a good thing it is that Laurel and Hardy movies are not open to great critical debate. That way, you don't have to worry that The Bohemian Girl isn't one of their better efforts. We don't have to argue that, as with the fitfully amusing Swiss Miss, the operatic elements fail to gel and should have been removed. Yes, as a music-free short this would have been vastly superior, but so what? Laurel and Hardy aren't satirists; they don't indulge in Freudian critiques or social commentary, and all the better for it.Their brand of simple, slapstick fun is submerged, but if you can wade through the irrelevant gypsy sequences then it's there, just as funny as ever. Just the simple things, like Ollie smacking himself in the face with a potato, or Stan asking a town crier ("Nine o'clock and all's well") "Say, could you tell us the time?" – then following it up by nicking his bell.An unusually portly Stan here gets to do something I've never seen him do before – break the fourth wall with an Ollie-style double take to camera. Look at the scene where Stan steals a wallet, backflips it to Ollie with not a single look back, and Hardy catches it in his hat and curves it back onto his head – all in one fluid motion. This is the first Laurel & Hardy film I'd seen since the apocryphal Bronson Pinchot/Gailard Sartain version, For Love Or Mummy. This only serves to heighten appreciation of how good the real duo's timing was.It is weird seeing the two as conmen, but they're still as likeable as ever. Stan even gets to do the "floating finger" routine. Other elements quite racy for 1936 include adultery and child abduction. Yet great visual gags abound – "Give me part of the banana" orders a bossy Hardy before Stan hands him the skin. There's even some surreal stuff, like Stan's female/deep singing voices and his stretchy ear. Okay, both of those are throwbacks to Way Out West, but if they work, why not use ‘em? A classic four-minute scene has Laurel getting inadvertently drunk while trying to fill bottles of wine.The somewhat overbearing opera fixations are even punctured by a Stan who eats Ollie's breakfast because he doesn't know how long a song will take to finish. There's even room for James Finlayson to get in on the act.Yes, The Bohemian Girl isn't Laurel and Hardy at their best. Yet when even their average films are this funny, then who cares?

Bohemian Girl won't rank up with the best of the Laurel and Hardy features but it's a fine attempt with a number of wonderful scenes. Only the bland singing and the overly dramatic plot stop this picture from claiming a spot alongside Way Out West and Blockheads as one of the boys finest.The best scenes include a wonderful pickpocketing scene, a crazy wine-drinking sketch and the final image of an overgrown Ollie and a shortened Stan. Some Laurel and Hardy regulars make brief but amusing appearances. Mae Busch is as tyrannical as ever as Oliver's wife. She has the gall to have an affair right in front of her husband and yet Ollie is too much of a gentleman to stop her. James Finlayson has a nice turn as a palace guard adopting that wonderful double take of his to great effect.Bohemian Girl is not the film that you'd show to a first time Laurel and Hardy watcher. It lacks the rhythm of their best pieces. However, for a loyal viewer, it provides a few of the boys finest routines.