Stan and Ollie
Whiling away a miserable wet weekend in Plymouth (I don’t go home every weekend because of the time and cost), went to the pictures for the first time in a long time.
Much impressed with the new layout at the cinema, big semi-reclining airline style seats with ample legroom. Being 4:30 in the afternoon, only 7 or 8 in the auditorium... the film was Stan and Ollie, and I loved it.
I was never a huge fan of Laurel and Hardy, being (I suppose) the generation that “didn’t want to see a Laurel and Hardy movie any more”. I didn’t really care for Abbot and Costello, either. But I DO enjoy Steve Coogan, and this was a joy.. a gentle, humorous biopic of sorts about two ageing has-beens, coasting towards the inevitable end amid the aftermath of old betrayals and quarrels, affection and ingrained habit.
The sniping wives are a joy. Hardy’s wife is clearly distressed by his failing health and career, Laurel’s wife... not do much, a hard-eyed Russian former dancer and failed actress who for some reason won’t sit next to the magnificently slippery Bernard Delfont at appearances. Laurel remarks at one point that he won’t marry again, just find a woman he doesn’t like and buy her a house.
I loved it. The recreated routines are well done, the characters are convincing, the whole film is gently melancholic as optimism fades away. It had never occurred to me that L&H were still wearing basically Edwardian stage costumes into the 1950s - wing collars, frock coats and bowlers.
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