Rent Laurel and Hardy: Vol.5: Our Relations/Dual Roles Shorts (1936)

Our Relations. - Laurel and Hardy: Vol.5: Our Relations/Dual Roles Shorts review by Steve

Classic farce with Stan and Ollie playing employed men of reasonable means with wives who are not as aggressive as their usual partners. In fact, Ollie calls his wife Mama, and Stan's wife calls her husband lover! What next, kids? This is the least idiotic Stan and Ollie ever got, and indeed they are almost functional, even if a trial for their spouses. Things have never been better.

 The duo find out that they both have twins, and hilariously their brothers are also eternally tethered together. These are Bert and Alf, and they are sailors who have just docked in Stan and Ollie's hometown. And they are as clueless as our heroes usually are. Which leads to inevitable complications of mistaken identities, particularly relating to Stan and Ollie's wives and a couple of popsies out for a good time who have their hooks into Bert and Alf.

 This is a wonderfully entertaining film, dense with gags. OK, some of them aren't all that original (three men trapped in a phone box, and a cake fight) but in the hands of the masters, they are funny all over again. It just takes a long suffering sideways glance into the camera from Ollie.

 Great to see James Finlayson once more. Daphne Pollard and Betty Brown are fun as the wives. With Alan Hale and Sidney Toler there's quality in the support cast. As so often, a comedian from the old silent days is featured, with Arthur Housman playing his usual friendly drunk. It's a very slick film, which ends memorably with Stan and Ollie teetering on the side of the dock, their feet stuck in cement. Laurel and Hardy were lasting the thirties better than most of their vaudeville contemporaries, with many classics still to come.