Stan & Ollie

Roscrea 1988 (ish). Me, my Nana, a couple of bars of Turkish Delight and a black & white film on TV. Watching two fools trying to make a window frame in a sawmill. Nothing is going right for them. They manage to get caught in the frame, nail themselves and their hats to the wall, get sucked into the sawdust tube and eventually drive their car through a buzzsaw splitting it in two. We were in tatters laughing. Busy Bodies was the film. Laurel & Hardy were the men. They were amazing. 31 years later I got to see them again and left the cinema on a high. 

It's 1937. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are at the heights of their careers but both are unhappy about the lack of control they have over their work so Stan decides to do something about it all. 16 years later we rejoin them as they go on a reunion trip around Britain, both of them trying to claw back former fame & glory. 16 years is a long time in the entertainment industry and tastes have changed.

I loved this. Loved it. It's a glorious look at the complexities of male friendships and the pain caused by being unable to let go of the past. Steve Coogan as Stan and John C. Reilly are immense, creating characters full of warmth and hope and fun & regret. (If pushed to pick who's better, watch out for the late scene of Coogan struggling with his emotions while sitting beside a bed. I've never seen him as good as this.) During the earlier recreations of their films and their later stageshows you'll find yourself forgetting you aren't watching the real thing. Physical transformations aside they just nail the double act. The little shoves, the exasperated glances, the gentle silliness of it all, one simple moment with a hard boiled egg and a salt shaker creased me up. It's filled with a type of humour that harks back to a nicer age. No nastiness, no cruelty, just a pair of expert funnymen breaking their backs to make an audience smile. Thankfully the film doesn't feel the need to be cynical and look at the humour through a modern lense. It just lets it flow. Fair play to director Jon S. Baird for that. He knows this is a story that doesn't need a contemporary touch.

With happiness comes melancholia as we realise they weren't as close in real life as their films made out. With an audience they were a perfect pair but alone things became a bit more business-like and one blisteringly cold argument is enough to send everything tumbling down when 16 years worth of unsaid words come spilling out. It's a hard moment to watch because it feels so real, two people not backing down and jamming the sword in whenever they can. Seeing another side to character's you've enjoyed all your life is tough going and realising they are only frail human beings is even tougher. I dare anyone to try and get through this without getting watery eyes. People are resilient though. So resilient. A resilience that pays off in one of the more bitter sweet comedic song and dance scenes you'll ever see.

It's Stan & Ollie's film but the women in their lives were as important to them as their work. Ida Laurel (Nina Arianda, brilliant) and Lucille Hardy ( Shirley Henderson) are as much of a double act as their other halves and with no love lost between them. Lucille, all business like but ultra protective of her older husband who dotes on her, Ida, hilariously brusque and rude but always with one caring eye on Stan. Her blatantly open distaste for Stan & Ollie's agent is hilarious. It's just one of many funny moments dotted amongst the sadness. Stan trying to charm a secretary with his floating hat trick; the tears of laughter that spill from Ollie's eyes when they write their material; the amazingly silly railway routine. There's so much here to love. It's a universal type of humour too. If you loved the original films you'll be delighted with this but if it's all new to you, you'll soon warm to it's charms.

Go see this if you can. It's a lovely, nostalgic, funny and upsetting ode to the olden days, to friendship, to the ravages of time, to letting go and to moving on. It's a beautiful movie and one that will have you running to youtube when you get home to devour every bit of Laurel And Hardy that you can find.