Tropic Sprockets / Stan & Ollie

By Ian Brockway

Jon S. Baird (Filth) directs “Stan & Ollie,” a stunningly authentic biopic of the 1930s Laurel & Hardy comedy team in their later years. The film moves and excels from the first moment to the last. It is both a story of a working friendship and a meditation on slapstick and the passing of time.

It is 1937 and the duo is famous. Laurel (Steve Coogan) is unhappy with the current contract under Hal Roach (Danny Huston). He wants to start his own movie company with Hardy (John C. Reilly). Hardy does not want to make waves.

After a tense confrontation with Roach, Laurel convinces Hardy to tour with him to raise money for a feature film about Robin Hood, supposedly set to start production.

The tour is grueling. Hardy, extremely overweight with heart trouble is not in the best of health. The routines are demanding and the hours are long.

To make matters worse, theater-goers are scarce. Yet through it all, Stan and Ollie stick together.

The wondrous thing about this film is that it is perfectly on key. It is not maudlin, hammy, overly sentimental or unreal. This is a story of show-business that reveals both the exaltation and the ennui involved in pining for packed seats and it is unfailingly direct.

In other hands, the film might have been shallow or superficial, especially given the old fashioned time period and subject. Thankfully, we get unflinching pathos, a story of two very gifted comedians working together on a tough theater circuit.

Jon S. Baird has the wisdom not to overload us with comic gags and to only show them when necessary. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are not bumbling clowns but genuine actors. They discuss ideas, worries, anxieties and fears. Reilly and Coogan are nearly supernatural in their incarnations.

Right before our eyes, suddenly we see the rotundly righteous control-freak Ollie and then just as quickly, appears the pale and quizzical Stan. All vestiges of Reilly’s usual loud and overly silly persona from past films have vanished. In its place is a Hal Roach comedian. Coogan’s routine neurotic aura has gone as well. Both performances are striking and rare, understated as needed and quite revelatory.

Solid roles are to be found also in Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson as Ida Laurel and Lucille Hardy. Ida says she is incapable of physical pain and downs Stan’s drink before he has a chance, while Lucille is a compulsive talker, obsessively watching Hardy.

Though the comedy team is beloved, it proves a bumpy ride. Stan simmers with resentment, he nearly feels an irreparable break with his friend while Hardy delivers a stinging reply: They were never friends.

This is one of the most realistic portraits of a friendship in show-business that I have ever seen and the final segment that epitomizes the unbreakable ethic that the show must go on, is surprisingly natural, heart-rending and moving with a sequence that will release tears.

“Stan & Ollie” is an entertaining and profound portrait of a friendship. It is without guile, manipulation or artifice. As a film and a record of two lives living with comedy and one another, it is a joy.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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