An alleged improper meeting between electrical store owner and flirtatious grocers wife Mae Busch results in unfounded jealousy from her husband, Charlie Hall, who seeks revenge against Oliver and his partner, Mr. Laurel. At the rate they go, neither store will be standing after this 20 minute short is over. It's always amusing to see adults acting more like children than children, using products from both stores as props in their revenge against each other. While she has more to do than the recent shorts in the series, it's obvious that producer Hal Roach was out to lighten her image. Hall makes an amusing foil, too foolish to be a real heavy, and thus not a hissable villain. Nice light funny later entry of Laurel and Hardy shorts.

This is the one in which Laurel and Hardy open an electric supplies store and find their neighbor is a grocer with whom they've had a previous run-in -- in "Them Thar Hills." There's nothing dull about this short. It's not wildly creative in any way but the gags some satisfyingly quickly. Much is done with exploding light bulbs.The usual ritual is followed. The hostile grocer stands quietly, glowering, while Hardy opens his cash register and pours a jar of glue over the compartments and the change they contain.Distracting if you have the blues. Mildly diverting for most others. Essential for fans of the comedy team.

Revisitng Laurel and Hardy's films it's surprising to see that the practice of slipping in a few adult references for the grown-ups wasn't the idea of the makers of full-length 90s cartoon films. As other reviewers have mentioned, Ollie's comment to Mae Busch, the wife of the diminutive neighbouring shopkeeper with whom he is embroiled in the 'tit for tat' feud of the title, is clearly a deliberate double-entendre that somehow slipped by the censors as, no doubt, it would have any watching children. There's a similar sight gag in County Hospital that is quite subtle by comparison but no doubt just as deliberate.Anyway, this one's pretty good. It's a sequel to the previous year's Them Thar Hills which introduced us to the memorable song lyric Pom Pom and it probably just shades that one for laughs. The boys were at the top of their game in the mid-thirties thanks to sharp, well-paced shorts like these and some of the touches here are truly first-class.

I'm always learning something new when I research a film on the IMDb, like how this Laurel and Hardy short was a sequel of sorts to "Them Thar Hills". So now I'll have to search that one out to round out the experience.When I watch anything with Stan and Ollie in it today, I have to marvel at just what a pair of comic geniuses they were. As a kid, I always preferred Abbott and Costello, but I realize now that that with A&C, they did funny things, but Laurel and Hardy did things funny. As an example, just check out the timing involved whenever they leave Hall's grocery store and eat one of his cookies. They start out very simply and wind up after three or four tries in an increasingly complex choreography that's just brilliant to watch.There's also the misdirection with the pilfering customer in Stan and Ollie's electrical supply store, who starts out on foot and winds up hauling the entire store away in a moving van. With the boys none the wiser, they carry on their feud with Hall in an escalating series of comic encounters. And how about Ollie getting away with that line to Hall's wife coming down the stairs from the bedroom - "I've never been in a position like that before". I would never have picked up on that double entendre as a kid, but boy oh boy, it was right out there in plain sight for the alert viewer to pick up on and and go 'huh?'.In any event, just about any Laurel and Hardy short offers as much entertainment as anyone else's full length feature, so taking in three or four at a time can only quadruple your fun. And by the way, why is it you never hear about alum any more?