Le concierge est dans l'escalier

George Burns used to mourn the death of vaudeville, saying "There's no place for a kid to be bad anymore." No place for him to learn his craft. Well, Stan Laurel knew how to be a silent clown: anyone who came out of Fred Karno's troupe knew that. But here, though, he is busy ringing the changes on bad film comedy. When he had done everything poorly, what was left was Mr. Laurel.

At this point, Hal Roach was looking for more film comedians: all he had was Harold Lloyd's series and a graduate of Fred Karno's troupe seemed just the thing. Unhappily, there isn't much to this one, in which Stan plays a badly-dressed janitor in a building where various subplots are busy going on. There aren't even good titles -- that would have to wait for the arrival of H.M. Walker the following decade. For the moment, we are treated to such witticisms as "Toby owns his own vacuum cleaner. He bought it on the installment plan and is still stalling." For fanatics of Stan Laurel only.

Success came late in life for the 29 year old Stan Laurel compared with the 24 year old Charles Chaplin in 1914 and the 22 year old Oliver Hardy in the same year. He does, however, bring insight into human behaviour with his years in the wilderness, and demonstrates that he is a good improviser.

This is a rather dull film starring a young Stan Laurel. Seeing this film you really can't tell that a future super-star was in the making--mostly because the script isn't funny and there really isn't much to recommend this bad film.

Stan plays a janitor at a hotel and frankly nothing he did made me laugh. From dropping letters and trying to retrieve them with a vacuum, getting wet, helping a lady shoot her cheating husband and being chased by the police, none of these are particularly good and there is no real coherent plot--just of moments all strung haphazardly together. Of interest ONLY to Laurel and Hardy completists (like myself) who want to try to see every extant film of these men--even their obscure early stuff. This one, by the way, deserved to be obscure!!