I mentioned last week that TCM's Star of the Month for December 2020 is a pair of stars, that being the comic duo of Laurel and Hardy. It just so happens that during the recent Thanksgiving free preview weekend, one of the Starz/Encore channels was running Stan and Ollie. I recorded it, and since it's running again tomorrow at 6:55 AM on StarzEncore (and again three hours later for those who only have the west coast feed), I watched it to do a review on here.
The movie starts off with a brief prologue in 1937, telling us how the duo of Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) were Hollywood's top comic actors at the time, and visits them on the set of Way Out West. This was made by the Hal Roach studios, and we get a brief sighting of Roach, as well as frequent Laurel and Hardy foil James Finlayson. Both halves of the duo have financial issues thanks to ex-wives and Hardy's constant wagering on horses. Laurel also wants more artistic freedom, so he eventually signs a contract with Fox that Hardy doesn't; cut to a small scene of filming on Zenobia, which starred only Hardy and an elephant, not Laurel. (IMDb doesn't list any features Laurel made without Hardy at this time.)
Fast forward to 1953. They had made one movie together since the end of World War II, thanks in part to changing tastes reducing the duo's popularity. Laurel wants to make another movie based on the Robin Hood legend, but is having difficulty securing funding. So together with a theater producer, Bernard Delfont (Danny Huston), the two start off on a tour of variety halls re-enacting some of the classic skits from their movies.
Because of their relative lack of success over the past several years, Laurel and Hardy start off in small theaters well away from London, a tour reminiscent of the theater company in The Dresser. They're also getting small audiences, which makes Hardy think something's up, although Laurel keeps trying to maintain Laurel's hopes of the funding for the movie. The tour snowballs in popularity, getting larger audiences and better venues, until eventually the pair make it to London and their wives (Shirley Henderson as Lucille Hardy and Nina Arianda as Ida Kitaeva Laurel) join them in a big public relations coup.
But it's here that the team starts facing a series of setbacks. Now in London, Laurel realizes that he can go visit the producer with whom he had been in discussions over funding for that Robin Hood movie. Unfortunately, the producer had sent Laurel a telegram in Hollywood that apparently never reached Laurel, stating that funding fell through, and the studio was dropping the project, something Laurel never realized. Laurel also has some simmering resentments with Hardy over Zenobia and the contract dispute with Hal Roach, which boils over at an afterparty when an oblivious old man tries to show himself to be the team's biggest fan.
But the biggest setback comes when the pair are asked to judge the sort of seaside resort town beauty contest that Laurence Olivier's character organized in The Entertainer. The two are asked to come up on stage to announce the winner. Laurel comes up but hardy stays at the foot of the stairs, before collapsing from what is a minor heart attack, minor being defined as a heart attack that happens to somebody you don't personally know. Lucille had always been a bit worried about the tour since she knows her husband is getting old, and now with this heart attack, she wants Oliver to retire now. This even though there are still tour dates.
History tells us that Laurel and Hardy did finish the tour, with Hardy eventually retiring in 1955, a few years before his death, and Laurel more or less retiring with Hardy's retirement although staying involved in answering fan mail and giving advice to up-and-comers until his death in 1965.
I really enjoyed the performances from the two leads, although I had a few technical issues. The directing seemed mildly intrusive in the way that I had a problem with Chocolat, but nowhere near as obnoxious as Darkest Hour. There was also something mildly sterile about the production design, as though everything was all too neat and clean for what, assuming the tour started off slowly, would have been much more run down.
These are minor quibbles, however, and I very much enjoyed and recommend Stan & Ollie. The movie did get a DVD and Blu-ray release; Amazon lists the Blu-ray as being available while the TCM Shop has it on backorder.
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