Brats

One of the better Laurel & Hardy comedy short movies I have seen, 'Brats' stars only Stanley Laurel and Oliver Hardy. They play Stan and Ollie and their sons. Both wives are out and now they have to take care of the children. While the children play the two adults play a game of checkers, with Laurel easily winning. After the children fight over and over again the kids are send to bed, but there their arguments continue. The fathers play a game of pool in the meanwhile.

This is a very creative short, with lots of big laughs. The scenes with the children have some very large furniture so the actors look smaller. For that reason alone this short is recommended, but fortunately there are more reasons, including those big laughs I mentioned. A very good comedy short, highly recommended.

Especially interesting for the miniatures of STAN LAUREL and OLIVER HARDY, since they play dual roles of father and son. The "brats" in the title are the kids who distract their fathers from playing a game of chess and are told to quiet down.

All of the sight gags are fun to watch and the trick photography with the "kids" appearing to cope with over-sized furniture and props is another point of interest.

For the finale, the "kids" forget to turn the water in the tub off after Hardy gets cooled off by the ever thoughtful Stan. The cooling process backfires when the lads forget to turn the water off. The movie concludes with Oliver promising to get the kids a glass of water if they promise to go to sleep.

As Stan starts for the bathroom door, Oliver stops him. "I'll get the water. You might spill it." And then the avalanche of water for the final shot.

Good gags and plotting make this one of the duos more enjoyable shorts, all of it benefiting from the performances of Laurel and Hardy.

I have to give credit to the people who ran the Laurel and Hardy productions; they were quite creative. In one episode the guy's play their own sisters. In this one they play their children as well as the adults. This called for scenes to include furniture and props much bigger than normal. It comes off very well. Of course little Stannie is as big an idiot as his father and the same for the other "little" guy. Of course, they get into big trouble by doing exactly the kinds of things their adult halves would do. There are some really nice scenes of high slapstick. The ending is great. By the way, the wives are away. They are out doing target practice.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were of course already big kids in their movies but this time they also play kids.

Beside the roles of the two young children, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, of course also portray the two fathers. This guarantees some hilarious sequences between the two kids and the two fathers. Most of the time Laurel & Hardy are playing against, well, Laurel & Hardy. It makes some of the sequences work out all the more hilarious.

For the sequences with the children the sets are made to look larger. So large toys, a large bed and a large bathroom, among other things. It makes the movie good looking and above all also very original.

Of course Laurel & Hardy look nothing like children, after all they both were close to 40 years old at the time of this movie. Yet it becomes very believable because of the acting of the two with each other. They both help each other out in this movie to make their performances work out as both good and hilarious.

The movie features some really great and funny sequences, such as Oliver going done a staircase on a roller-skate and Laurel & Hardy being washed away by a large flood wave. The movie has some truly unique and hilarious comical moments in it that makes "Brats" an original as well as an hilarious comedy short. It also features plenty of enough slapstick to please the fans but it above all is a movie that should entertain just basically everybody.

Not just your typical average Laurel & Hardy comedy short!

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I loved this movie... it was really funny and clever. Mostly I am writing this because I had noticed a couple of possible errors in others' comments here, and so I wanted to respectfully point them out: In reply to the comment from "planktonrules" about the tub faucet's turning itself off: I don't think the water was supposed to look/sound as if it actually shut off --- I think it merely stopped making its rushing noise of coming out of the spout because the water level had become as high as the spout. In reply to the comment from "Theo Robertson" about the grownup men and their boys only once appearing in the same shot together: actually, there was a scene in the very beginning of all four people in the same room, but they are far enough away that you can't see their faces all that well. Maybe in that shot, the two children were just young actors made up to look enough like Stan and Ollie to pass as their kids for just that one brief sequence?