Stan & Ollie

Stan Lau­rel and Oliv­er Hardy forged a cre­ative bond so iron­clad, you’re left to baf­fle at how two human beings could be so innate­ly sim­pati­co with one another’s dis­tinct sen­si­bil­i­ties. Their con­nec­tion tran­scends ratio­nal thought. They are like con­joined twins where, if an attempt were made to sur­gi­cal­ly divide them, one would like­ly expire from the trau­ma. When you see them do the lit­tle jig at the begin­ning of their clas­sic west­ern par­o­dy, Way Out West, you’re wit­ness­ing a unique moment in this his­to­ry of art. What they had was light­en­ing in a bottle.

This new film by Jon S Baird rides on this con­cept of the duo whose suc­cess is pred­i­cat­ed entire­ly on them work­ing as a part­ner­ship. And yet, it’s this very idea that pre­vents this sen­ti­men­tal saga from ever tak­ing off, as Lau­rel and Hardy’s tal­ents were entire­ly spe­cif­ic to those spe­cif­ic peo­ple and those spe­cif­ic char­ac­ters. Sure, you can have actors doing impres­sions of these com­ic behe­moths, but you absolute­ly can’t fake that bond.

And so it is with Steve Coogan and John C Reil­ly, doing their utmost to mim­ic Stan and Ollie, but nev­er mak­ing it feel any­thing more than they’ve gone a lit­tle hog wild at a friend’s cos­tume par­ty. Sus­pend­ing dis­be­lief is not an easy task, and Coogan in par­tic­u­lar is hard to accept, espe­cial­ly giv­en that much his career has been pred­i­cat­ed on his impres­sions and voice­work. Where Reil­ly is a lit­tle more relaxed and nat­u­ral­is­tic as ​“the Babe”, Coogan strains for effect, over­load­ing his pre­cious per­for­mance with all the tics and trade­marks, but to the point where it feels like he’s des­per­ate to prove that he’s done the research. His reg­u­lar aping of Stan’s sil­ly lit­tle hair scrunch nev­er cred­i­bly lands – it’s like watch­ing your mad grand­fa­ther doing it.

This film is inspired by AJ Marriot’s book ​‘Lau­rel and Hardy: The British Tours’, which chron­i­cles the two­some in the twi­light years of their career. The promise of bud­get for a Robin Hood-themed caper sees the pair yomp to rain-swept Britain where they are trapped in a hold­ing pat­tern of humil­i­at­ing, ill-attend­ed stage shows as they wait for the pic­ture mon­ey to be signed off. Their UK pro­mot­er, Bernard Del­font (Rufus Jones), is a bizarre, sitcom‑y car­i­ca­ture of a hood­wink­ing agent, run­ning cir­cles around the pair in order to bump up atten­dance num­bers for their gigs.

Mean­while, Ollie’s health is fal­ter­ing, and Stan is still mad at a past episode in which Ollie capit­u­lat­ed to the demands of their erst­while pro­duc­er, Hal Roach (Dan­ny Hus­ton). It doesn’t help mat­ters that the film is packed to the gills with bland, sin­gle-serv­ing sup­port­ing char­ac­ters who all spout the same vari­a­tion of ​“Lau­rel and Hardy? yes, you used to be hilar­i­ous”, duly capped off with a embar­rassed reac­tion shot from the boys.

The film is gen­tle to an uned­i­fy­ing degree, soft-edged and soft focused. One key prob­lem is that it is nev­er fun­ny. Baird accepts that Lau­rel and Hardy’s rou­tines and gags were fun­ny when orig­i­nal­ly per­formed, but also believes that they will be fun­ny if he just recre­ates them with none of the poise, none of the chem­istry and none of the mag­ic. The cam­era con­stant­ly cuts to audi­ences guf­faw­ing at the on-stage antics, and you’re left to pon­der: what on earth are they laugh­ing at? If this is so fun­ny, why aren’t we laugh­ing too?

There is some humour, though, and it’s entire care of Shirley Hen­der­son as Lucille Hardy and Nina Arian­da as Ida Kitae­va Lau­rel – both hilar­i­ous as the type of over­bear­ing wives seen a com­e­dy clas­sic such as Sons of the Desert. They are so far and away the strongest ele­ments of the film, it’s hard to com­pre­hend why they weren’t pushed fur­ther to the fore. The film’s great­est fail­ing is that it makes you ques­tion whether Lau­rel and Hardy were fun­ny in the first place, or just a pair of two-bit, end-of-the-pier clowns. Return­ing to the orig­i­nal films in order to quash these mis­giv­ings is a plea­sure, not a chore.