Los calaveras (1931)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Spanish version of Laurel and Hardy's BIG BIG! and LAUGHING GRAVY. The film starts off as Laurel and Hardy lie to the wives so that they can go to a party being thrown for them (from BE BIG!) and then we see the boys kicked out, living on their own and having to sneak their dog back into their room after the landlord kicked him out (from LAUGHING GRAVY). This Spanish version of the two L&H shorts isn't nearly as good as the American versions and I'd also add that they were better done in the French version LES CAROTTIERS. With that said, this here remains a curio just to see the boys speaking Spanish and having to do the same film in multiple versions. Very few of the alternate versions I've seen have actually been better than the American ones but it's still speaks to the talent of the men that they were able to do all these different versions with a language that they weren't used to speaking. Of the two shorts, I'd say that LAUGHING GRAVY works the best here even though it really doesn't offer anything that we didn't see in the previous versions. I thought the humor was much better suited here and especially the stuff dealing with the dog. The first portion taken from BE BIG! is nice and the jokes involving Hardy getting into his shoes is decent but just doesn't get any big laughs.
