La vida nocturna

La vida nocturna (1930)

** 1/2 (out of 40

Spanish language version of BLOTTO has bachelor Oliver Hardy trying to get his married friend Stan Laurel to go out for the night. They decide on a plan of Laurel sending himself a message stating he's needed at work but the wife catches on and follows the boys to their nightclub. LA VIDA NOCTURNA is worth watching if you're a fan of Laurel and Hardy but I think others should certainly stick with the English language version since it's certainly a lot better and doesn't contain the extra footage that was added for this released. This extra footage is just some throw-away scenes inside the club where we see a couple vaudeville acts but these really add nothing to the plot and just make the film longer so that Hal Roach could charge more money. I thought the film started off well enough but if you've seen BLOTTO then you're not going to be taken by surprise by anything here. For the most part the start of the picture offers up some nice laughs as Laurel tries to get out of the house but things slowly run out of gas as the picture moves along. Having seen a number of these foreign language versions, I think Hardy was a lot better at speaking Spanish so he certainly handles it well. The extra running time is really what ruins this film so stick with the English version unless you're a die-hard fan who wants to see everything the boys did.