2018 biographical movie
Rating: 14/20
Plot: A decade-and-a-half after their biggest hits, Laurel and Hardy embark on a stage tour of England to drum up interest in a Robin Hood comedy.
Though it was a wise decision to focus on this particular period in the career and relationship of Laurel and Hardy, my favorite part was easily the 10-minute opening extended shot that takes the titular comedy duo through a studio to the set where they film a scene for their Western comedy. During that scene, the dialogue reveals everything even a person with limited knowledge of Laurel and Hardy need to know about their popularity or success and their relationship, and there's a third party who enters the conversation at one point to set up what winds up being the inciting incident that throws them into the situation they wind up in fifteen years later. Well, that an an elephant. As a cinephile, I always enjoy seeing old-timey movie studio sets like this, and as a fan of early comedy, I really liked seeing this pair of characters coming to life like this.
The movie does a good job focusing on the friendship of these two, their professional partnership, and a conflict that threatens both. There are moving moments that are likely more moving because John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan do such a good job of humanizing this pair. They're not mythologized, and they're not turned into caricatures. They are humans with ambitions and hurt feelings and regrets and unspoken gripes. Reilly's under six hundred pounds of make-up and fat spray, waddling with a limp. He sounds like John C. Reilly at times, but I'm not sure I would have known it was him if I didn't know it was him. Coogan's also great, and again, they're great because they're playing human beings. Sure, they nail the stage personas, the dance moves, the hat tricks, and the gags, but this movie doesn't work at all if they're just doing impressions of Laurel and Hardy.
Eventually, Lucille and Ida, the wives played by Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda, join the pair on their tour, and at that point, this movie started to deflate a little bit. Their performances were a little too big at first, and it started to distract from what was really the heart of this movie. But you know what? Those performances and those characters really grew on me after a while.
"There it is--the Eiffel Tower." That one made me laugh.
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