Beau Hunks

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Suffering from a failed love affair, Ollie drags Stan off to join the French Foreign Legion. Once in the desert, their merry mix ups cause much mayhem. The BEAU HUNKS are soon sent to relieve an isolated fort, but arrive just in time to endure a fierce Arab attack...

A bit longer & more elaborate than most of the Boys' short subjects. Stan & Ollie were excellent at this kind of farce; they provide lots of laughs as they try to act like competent Legionaries. As an added treat, Ollie gets to sing 'I Love You' in that wonderfully nostalgic high tenor voice of his.

Can you even call this a comedy short? The movie is nearly 40 minutes long and it actually features a plot line. Anyway, short or long feature, this movie is a well written and directing one which makes this movie a very enjoyable and comical great movie.

After once again being letdown in love, Oliver Hardy signs up with the Foreign Legion to forget his problems. Of course he drags Stan Laurel along with him. Once joined, they get into the middle of a battle between the Foreign Legion troops and a tribe of Arabs. This plot line doesn't sound unfamiliar for the Laurel & Hardy fans, since this theme is used in a dozen of other Laurel & Hardy pictures. Still "Beau Hunks" is a original movie on its own, mainly because its a well written and directed one.

The movie has some really great and comical dialog. It doesn't rely so much on its slapstick humor but that doesn't mean this movie is any less fun than other Laurel & Hardy comedy shorts.

Also its action and scale is quite nice which helps to make this movie one of the most impressively good looking shorts.

The acting is great. Of course Laurel & Hardy are great as ever and so is the impressing Charles Middleton, who still is best known for playing Emperor Ming in the Flash Gordon movies from the '30's. Also fun was to see Jean Harlow as the woman in the picture, who is a important returning element in the movie. It's nice to see the boys paying homage to the then already famous Jean Harlow, with who they worked together in the silent comedy short "Double Whoopee". Director James W. Horne also plays a small part in the movie. The only Laurel & Hardy movie in which he appears as an actor. The movie is further more filled with a whole bunch of Laurel & Hardy regulars in bit parts such as Baldwin Cooke, Charlie Hall, Jack Hill, among others.

A very well made that also is fun to watch as well. Highly recommendable!

8/10

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Spurned by his beautiful fiancée, Oliver decides to take Stanley and join the foreign legion. Once there he finds his fiancée has travelled more than him and decides to leave, but it is too late. The pair go off on training but then the siege of a nearby fort in the desert means they will see more action than expected.

One of the best things about Christmas is that the TV channels need to fill the schedules with films etc that feel different from the usual daytime stuff they cram on. One of the ways they do this is mini-seasons of work from various people or themes etc. One such this year has been Laurel and Hardy films and I'm very glad. This film was one I hadn't seen before but it was very funny.

The film has really good set pieces but also a running gag that I didn't see coming so I won't spoil it for anyone else. I'm a big fan so I may be a little biased but I be surprised is anyone sat through this without laughing at least a few times. Both the leads are on top form and both have their little things that get me every time – Oliver's looks to camera and Stan's double takes at innocent objects in the background.

Overall this is pure gold with hardly a slow moment, even the jokes that were signposted as coming (the spring in the chair) made me laugh out loud. Good for fans and non-fans alike.

Each short or longer Laurel & Hardy movie is a classic in my view. The Laurel & Hardy tandem is unmatched in movie-history and in my opinion the majority of today's movie makers and writers can learn lots from L & H. They don't have Charly Chaplin's brilliance, but they are good! And funny! Their gags, faces, fights, accidents and disasters are hilarious and bring a smile to my face each time I watch. This time Hardy drags Laurel into a Foreign Legion adventure, because of a heartache and that gives plenty of room for these two legendary comedians to move! My advice: don't underestimate L&H movies!

Although "Beau Geste" had already been made

with Ronald Coleman in 1926, "Beau Hunks" is not just a funny play on words.

Unlike today, being called a hunk was not a compliment. In those days, "Hunk," "Hunky," or "Bohunk" was a pejorative term for an Eastern European --- (It's a conflation of "Bohemian" and "Hungarian.) The general connotation of the term was that of a stupid, not necessarily clean, undesirable immigrant. So to call someone a Bohunk was quite an insult.

It's a pity that the extremely stupid guidelines require ten lines of text, when I could have said everything in five. Are they perhaps taken from the IRS tech-writing standards for tax laws?