The Music Box

L&H are without doubt the best comedy double act of all time regardless of media format. Its amazing that their best movies are now 70 years old and yet remain timeless in their humour and inventiveness.

I've had the pleasure of seeing most of their movies - shorts & full format - and all of them have their own individual quirky qualities that other comedians still can't fathom.

The Music Box won them a well-deserved Oscar and although it is an excellently choreographed movie I personally don't think its their very best.

However, my opinion doesn't matter because any L&H fan will regard this movie as their favourite. The story is so simple yet so inventive and full of kinetic & emotive energy.

Stan & Ollie have to deliver a Piano to a highly strung guy who can't stand pianos. But just to make life a little interesting the guy's home just happens to be perched on a hill with the longest flight of steps in history to whit S&O have to push & pull their awkward delivery.

Some of the gags we've seen many times before but it doesn't matter because the added sparkle derives from the human emotions & expressions delivered with such panache from Stan & the long suffering Ollie - the way he looks-to-camera in a pleading kind of way just drives me wild with laughter & sympathy.

I can't find a single fault with this movie short, except that it just flies by so quickly. How I wish today's contemporary comedy writers could spend a few hours in a dark room watching how the masters of comedy produce such wonderful scripts. It proves that there is no need to have cheap & vulgar language, innuendo & explicit violence to make any audience, young or old, laugh with mirth.

The Golden Age of comedy is dead, long live the Golden Age; long live Laurel & Hardy!!!

*****/*****

Put simply, this is the funniest movie of all time. I cannot believe that there is anyone in the world who can watch this film and not be in hysterics by the last scene. Laurel and Hardy provided the template for all (and I mean all) comedy films that followed, and this was their absolute best.

This is one of the great classics of comedy, with Laurel & Hardy at their very best. It has a wealth of good material, and also shows their ability to extract every possible laugh from a relatively simple situation. It also includes appearances by Billy Gilbert and Charlie Hall, two of their best supporting players.

Stan and Ollie are delivering an old-fashioned player piano (or music box) to a house at the top of a hill. They encounter one difficulty after another getting it up to the top, and when they do, their troubles are just beginning. They use the situation to set up a lot of creative gags, all delivered with excellent timing.

There isn't any description that could really do justice to this hilarious short film - if you enjoy classic comedy, you will want to see "The Music Box" for yourself, so that you can enjoy two masters of comedy at their best.

This L&H-short relies solely on a premise. Stan and Ollie have to deliver a piano to a house. To get there, they have to get up an incredibly long staircase before they can even get to the front door. But even when they've reached the house there is no end to the chaos. The greatness of this short lies in it's deliberate pacing and perfect timing. Many jokes you see coming miles ahead, but the timing of the punchline always catches you off-guard and leaves you roaring with laughter. The best gag involves Stan pulling up the piano using a sunscreen, a joke too brilliantly executed to spoil. Watch it, enjoy it, marvel at the legend of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Question: why oh why aren't Laurel and Hardy films shown on TV at sensible times any more here in the UK? When I was a lad, they were on at 6pm on BBC2 and I spent many happy evenings as a child laughing my head off at their comedy short films. Now, you're lucky to catch them on TV at all, and they always seem to be scheduled at some unearthly hour of the morning.

Anyway, scheduling rant over. If you're a Laurel and Hardy virgin, this is a great place to start. It won them an Oscar, and it's a hilarious piece of perfectly constructed comedy. They are bungling delivery men who have to deliver a piano to a house at the top of an enormous flight of steps. (The location does exist in real life, apparently, and it's one of my aims in life one day to visit those steps and walk up 'em!) Needless to say, the piano seems to spend more time sliding back down the steps than it does going up them.

It's almost certainly their best short, and is required viewing for anyone wanting to know why Laurel and Hardy are one of the greats of movie comedy.