Dirty Work
25 November 1933
Whats wonderful about the whole universe of Laurel and Hardy, is that reality or physics or even Darwin's theory of evolution don't have much credence in Stan and Ollys world. This means you can pretty much do anything to the characters ,drop Olly down a chimney, proceeded by half a dozen bricks which hit him on the head,nothing,when Stan sass's Olly by using one his own wise cracks "I have nothing to say" he's immediately smacked over the head with a large shovel, again nothing, in fact I've lost count of how many they've fallen into barrels or had there body parts twisted into unnatural positions. So it should be of no surprise that when they go to clean the chimney of Lucien Littlefield as Professor Noodle that he is working on the elixir of life, that will rejuvenate anyone back to there younger selves. What's also notable about this period in history is that people still had servants often see butlers, housemaids and nanny's in these film. Dirty Work is no exception meet Sam Adams as Jessup, the butler, who surely must be the most sarcastic butler the boys have ever come across, when the boys ask to see the fireplace, his response is "in that room, you'll find it standing against the wall", which is a dozy of a line. When asking where the closet is Jessop says "You will know which is the closet, it has a door on it." . Stan and Olly are always knocking heads with authority figures whether its the police or judges but they also seem to rub Butlers up the wrong way also. But the highlight of this film is the ending, after being shown what Professor Noodle's elixir can do, the boys decide to try it out themselves on a carp, which I think that anyone with an acquiring mind would do. Unfortunately for Olly Stan accidently knock's him into the water with Professor Noodle's formula. Its not so much that the gags funny, its just that if you stick a chimpanzee in a bowler hat and have Olly's voice emanating from the chimp, well he sort of kind of does look abit like Olly.
out 0f 5