I'm nuts about Laurel and Hardy, but the folks behind the bioflick "Stan & Ollie" clearly adore them more. Blame that love on creating a nice mess.
The film opens in 1937 with Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) at the height of their popularity, harping good-naturedly about paying alimony checks and trying to squeeze in time to party with Clark Gable. Rich men's problems.
Flash forward 15 years with the pair reuniting after a passive-aggressive breakup, hoping to use a series of live performances to generate interest in a "Robin Hood" spoof they want to make.
Their "comeback" tour isn't off to a good start. Director Jon S. Baird makes sure we know that by having rain pour down as the sad sacks share a heavy sigh on the doorstep of a second-rate hotel.
Ba-dum-bump!
Sparse audiences and a suspect agent don't keep the pair from acting out their routines in their everyday life, even when their shenanigans don't make any sense. At a train station, the pair watch as a suitcase tumbles down the stairwell, a clear nod to their famous piano-moving scene. Laurel tries to entertain a secretary in a waiting room as if he's auditioning for Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town." Hardy reacts to a bad bet on a horse with the twirl of his tie.
Baird and writer Jeff Pope — a pair of BBC mainstays whose presence reflects the international appeal of their subjects — are so determined to show that the pair was just as hilarious and loose in real life as they were on the big screen, it's a wonder they don't kick off each morning by smooshing pies into each other's faces.
Too broad? Then you'll want to take a bathroom break during the scene in which Laurel realizes that the film deal is going nowhere and gazes wistfully at a poster of the red-hot Abbott and Costello.
