Comedy Film

[Inspector Abberline]

Dirty Work (1933)

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Professor Noodle is a mad scientist,but even mad scientists need there chimney swept every now and again.Who is that knocking on the door? Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy.chimney sweeps for hire,when asking where they might find the fireplace,Jessup the butler helpfully suggests "in that room, you'll find it standing against the wall" since there is no Charlie Hall or James Finlayson,to torment them in this short film its left to Jessop the butler,who is mildly sarcastic to say the least. Dirty Work has all your usual Laurel and Hardy film requisite's,bricks falling on Ollie's head,Stan shovelling soot into Ollie's trousers,Ollie falling off the roof of the house and straight through the top of a greenhouse.Also this has the rather immortal line from Ollie "I have nothing to say",whenever he is indignant or just rather irritated by something Stan has done to him,which is quite a lot.This line will end the film also as Ollie suffers even more at the hands of Stan,although you wonder if anything could be worse than sticking your sweeping brush on the end of a shotgun,luckily Ollie ducks,although later on even more bricks will be finding there way onto Oliver's head. Prof Noodle who is a mad scientist (is there any other?) is working on potion to make people younger,this also works on ducks to,as he shows the duo his solution in action and turns a duckling into an egg.Well when you got a massive tank of water and Stan and Ollie in the same room it goes without saying someones in trouble.Unfortunately for Ollie,it is he who gets pushed into the tank of water,the end result being a chimp in a bowler hat. Strangely what I find fascinating about this film is the amount of soot and dirt they generate,and by the end of it they are caked in the stuff,plus some marvellous sound effects whenever a brick or shovel is hit over the duo's heads.

[Inspector Abberline]

The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case

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The duo are dreamily sitting on the dock of a bay,when a newspaper flies into the face of a sleeping Ollie,he awakes all startled and see's an article about an Ebeneezer Laurel who has died,and requests that his relatives attend the reading of the will. Ollie soon perks up and starts questioning Stan about his heritage,Which leads to one of the funniest lines in the film.
Oliver: Now we're getting somewhere. Is he living?
Stanley: No. He fell through a trap door and broke his neck.
Oliver: Was he building a house?
Stanley: No, they were hanging him.
So after a rather confusing conversation,the duo are off to the Laurel residence to claim Stan's inheritance.What they find is the police,who are investigating the late Ebeneezer death and are holding the rest of the family for suspicion of murder. After yet another confusing conversation between the police and Stan,
Detective: "Where were you November the fifteenth?"
Stan: "November? (thinks about it) Septober, Octember, Nowonder..."
Afterwards the duo spend most of the time,running around and screaming as bats,cats and bed sheets seem to scare them witless. The film is in the style of Old Dark House ,with lightening and thunder as Stan and Ollie manage to stumble and crash around the mansion.Its also a fairly spooky little film,very much in the same vein as OLIVER THE EIGHTH,even the ending they reused again for Oliver The Eighth ( I wonder what is the earliest film that used the dream ending?). All together Murder Case is a bit slow in parts and certainly not one of there funniest films,it relies to heavily on slapstick and not enough on dialogue.But Stan has some great lines,as he continually gets into some rather confusing conversations every so often.Ollie on the other hand sees the situation to make some money out of his sidekick only to find a murderous butler and his cross dressing sidekick.It is a fun film,let down by two many repeated slapstick scenes,and an ending which at the time was probably original but now seems hackneyed.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Dictator (2012)

If like me you think Sacha Baron Cohen's previous two films, 2006's Borat and 2009's Bruno are the funniest comedies released this century then you are sure to enjoy The Dictator.

Where Baron Cohen almost reinvented movie comedy with his aggressive clowning in mock documentary format on those two films, in The Dictator he opts out of this approach and goes down the character fiction format of debut feature Ali G Indahouse (2002) which in my opinion didn't work anywhere near as well.

Here Cohen plays Arab tyrant Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen of Wadiya who goes to New York to defend his country's nuclear weapons program from UN investigation. However following a coup he is forced to join up with Zoey (Anna Faris), a human rights activist who offers him a job at her socially progressive, alternative lifestyle co-op in a bid to get his country back.

The jokes come thick and fast and are as non politically correct as anything in Borat, even sharing in that films anti-Semitism and sexist view points. Whilst the film is constantly amusing there are few actual laugh out loud moments but those that work really do cause a riot. For the most part this is fairly standard gross out comedy which is beginning to feel formulaic but because of Baron Cohen's comedy timing it still works well which hopefully doesn't really come over as a contradiction.

On the whole The Dictator is an hour and a half of non-PC comedy which i've enjoyed the two times i've watched it.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Dictator (2012)

I'm not the biggest fan of Sasha Baron Cohen's starring roles, always finding him preferable in supporting roles such as in Hugo and Sweeney Todd. It has also been a long time since I saw Brüno or Borat, both films I found better than Ali G Indahouse, but inferior to The Dictator. I thought it benefited from being a 'straight', comedy and without the faux documentary of Brüno and Borat, both making the audience complicit in the cruelty inflicted on those who are not in on the joke.

[Inspector Abberline]

Way Out West. (1937)

Probably one of the most well known films,mainly down to the song "Trail Of The Lonesome Pine",and anybody who listened to the radio back in the mid 1970's,especially Ed Stewpot on Saturday morning Junior Choice,will remember this getting plenty of air play when released as a single in 1975 and getting to number 2 in the singles chart. This and there dance number to the song "At The Ball, That's All" sung by The Avalon Boys,are just two of the most memorable scenes from there careers,I expect even today most people would recognise those scenes even if they had not seen the film.iconic as they are.Way Out West see the duo try to deliver the deeds to a goldmine left to Mary Roberts and played by Rosina Lawrence,only for the pair to fall foul of the ever devious James Finlayson as Mickey Finn and his wife Lola Marcel (Sharon Lynn)..Unlike some movies which have musical interludes,they never feels intrusive or stops the flow of comedy,and at 65 mins running time,it never out stays its welcome.With any of there films,I can forgive any thing as long as the film is peppered with some cracking one liners and Way Out West is no exception,When Lola is impersonating Mary Roberts she asks the duo "Is it true that he's dead?" ,and with no sign of irony or tact Stan replies "well we hope he is, they buried him!" ,which as a joke is brilliant and has been borrowed or plagiarised many times since.Its also filled with many silly moments of slapstick,and some rather riotous fun,especially when Lola searches Stan for the deeds,which Stan seems to be enjoying a little to much. Way Out West. is probably there best feature length film,mainly due to the fact it was produced by Hal Roach so its still in that golden era of there films.

[Inspector Abberline]

One Good Turn (1931)

It's kind of interesting that the comedy duo never shied away from portraying the down and outs,especially considering this was the period of America’s great depression,which just showed that they were pretty much the underdogs and the people's champion.Whereas James Finlayson always seemed to portray the money grabbing landlord or the unscrupulous businessman.In One Good turn Finlayson is pretty much sending himself up by playing an actor who is portraying a landlord who is threatening to evict a little old lady in a play that he is rehearsing. Stan and Ollie have to face the fact they are penniless and decide to beg for food,where upon they come across the house of Mary Carr who is billed unceremoniously as just the Old lady. One Good Turn is quite interesting,its a bit like Ken Loach directing one of there films,the boys are unemployed and desperate for food to the extent they will work for food,something that there audience at the time may have been familiar with during the depression,The other factor here,is that the two of them are constantly at each others throat ,it seems that being poor makes them even more irritable and argumentative.With misunderstandings a plenty and arguments and threats of betrayal as even more accusation's of dishonesty are banded about Oliver: "What". Don't try to alibi. You know you stole this money from that old lady. Why guilt is written all over you. It all ends on a rather apocalyptic note as Stan goes axe crazy and takes his revenge on Ollie.

[Inspector Abberline]

The Fixer Uppers (1935)

This seasonal offering see's the boys selling Christmas cards door to door,unfortunately for them there cards have the worst rhymes ever, "A merry Christmas, husband/ Happy New Year's nigh!/ I wish you Easter greetings/ Hooray for the Fourth of July!" .Eventually they come across the rather lovely Mae Busch,who is doing some rather unconvincing crying,due to the fact she feels her husband Charles Middleton as Pierre Gustave,no longer loves her.When the boys find out what is upsetting Mae,Stan has the rather confabulated plan of making her husband jealous by him witnessing her kiss another man,this is one of those classic Stan plan's that never sound the same twice when Ollie asks him to repeat it and the more he explains it the more confusing the plan gets.It all gets a bit X-rated when Mae Busch demonstrates to the duo how to give a passionate kiss,with the resulting kiss making Stan faint,in retaliation he plants a kiss on Mae with the result she faints this time.Where upon Stan tells Ollie "Well she started it!". The plot is not exactly sophisticated and it all goes a bit farcical with all the stuff about the husband catching his wife in a tryst.It also has a bizarre twist of fate,where the pair get drunk after taunting the husband on the phone,only for them to be taken back to Mae's house and dumped in her bed by the police when there blind drunk,and coming to in Mae bedroom,much to the husbands surprise and Ollie.There seems to be a lot of criticism with the older two reel shorts,with people feeling that by this time they had exhausted the format (which is crazy considering the Three Stooges made nearly 190 short films in the career) but I feel that The Fixer Uppers is much maligned but has some merit and is still a worth while watch.

[Inspector Abberline]

Love and Death (1975)

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Woody Allen takes his New York Jewish shtick and plonks his persona right in the middle of Russia during the Napoleonic wars, where even as a child he is given to religious dreams and asking the Grim Reaper some poignant question about the after life "Are there girls? " While managing to live through a battle that sees Boris (Woody Allen) become a war hero accidentally of course. Diane Keaton is again Allen's love interest and all round foil. Woody's humour ranges from the downright silly, see the scene where Allen and Keaton are trying to knock someone out with a wine bottle to philosophical pseudo debates that are just as silly but probably give the intellectuals in the audience something to laugh at as well.
The genius of Allen's early films was that he could pretty much get laugh 's from any subject matter, I remember watching Love and Death on television when I was an early teen, and while I did not get any of the literature references, it still gets a laugh just from absurdity of it all. The black drill sergeant putting Boris through his paces, or the explanation about why Young Gregor's son was older than Old Gregor.Nobody could figure out how that happened and What's it like to be dead? You know the chicken at Tresky's Restaurant? It's worse. And since I have never read any of the classic Russian novels the film is supposedly spoofing its is a testament to Allen's comedy that it does not really matter, because at the end of the day all it seems to come down to basically is love and death, or more to the point sex. Also the newly released Arrow Blu Ray is a very nice upgrade, while the film does not boast any special effects as such, it looks like it should, a film from the 1970's,no fancy what ever the **** they do with restorations, it just looks like a film no more no less. Love and Death is my favourite Woody Allen after Broadway Danny Rose, and they both stand well to repeated viewings, which is always a good sign. And remember Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.

[Inspector Abberline]

On the Buses (1971)

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While not exactly a festive film,no bank holiday or holiday period seems complete without a dose of On The Buses,to clear the away them winter blues and put awry smile on ones face (unless your a miserable PC grinch of course).This is proper period drama,forget all that Downton bollocks,nicotine stained fingers,wimpy bars,HP sauce bottles and every body seemingly wearing brown clothes with kipper ties against dis coloring wallpaper in a country that seemed like it was living under a cloud of smog.While every woman seemed to be wearing mini skirts and either bending over or walking up the stairs while being letched at by men with terrible haircuts and rotten teeth..At the the time this was released in the UK,On the Buses was up against some stiff competition at the cinema but still managed to beat Diamonds Are Forever at the box office.And while you could accuse the films and TV series of sexism,the first film tackles the issue of feminism full on.Both Stan Butler (Reg Varney) and Jack (Bob Grant) arrogantly flaunt the bus companies rules and regulations,and make poor oid Blakey (Stephen Lewis) live a misery,they believe they are able to do as they please,and with the power of unions behind them,they see themselves as being untouchable.But the management have a secret weapon to combat the duos arrogance,female bus drivers,who are not only a threat to the masculinity,(they are all pretty much a butch looking bunch of ladies to say the least) who are not easily intimadated but also a threat to the mens overtime as the more drivers there are ,means less work.But do not worry before it gets to much like a Ken Loach film we have plenty of sex mad house wife's,some amazingly bad bus driving and a dose of toilet humor just to make sure the film keeps up with with the British Standards on saucy UK comedies.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Inspector Abberline

On the Buses (1971)

Think you've posted this in the wrong thread.

This is the comedy thread.