Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [DVD]

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The boys are hapless greeting-card salesmen who gallantly come to the aid of a sales prospect (a more endearing Mae Busch) whose artist husband neglects her. The Music Box” wears its “certified classic” status well both as an introduction to the team and as the pinnacle of their art: This is what we talk about when we talk about Laurel and Hardy. Sofia Coppola’s film, based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, is a wish-fulfillment dream that loses momentum when its subject wakes up.

Oliver’s plans for a day out with Stan are put on hold after his wife demands he erect a radio antenna on the roof. The late actor was best known for Friends but brought his signature wit to plenty of characters not named Chandler. Products labelled '*item fulfilled by Exertis on behalf of hmv' will be supplied to you directly by Exertis via their approved couriers. When Charlie Chaplin transformed himself into a literal cog in a factory machine in Modern Times, he was making a satirical point about dehumanizing automation.C. Fields, and Mae West, whose subversive, anti-authority personas resonated with rebellious college students. The highlight is an extended sequence in which Stan and Ollie inadvertently get the lady of the house snoggered, and the illicit trio collapse on the bed in paroxysms of laughter while her husband (yes, the judge) plots duo-cide. They survived the transition from silent to sound films and made more than 100 shorts and features together. This is one of two Laurel and Hardy shorts enshrined in the National Film Registry and a master class in slapstick gag construction (or is that destruction?

A professed Maltin favorite, this short finds Laurel and Hardy a success with “a nice little fish business. The set contains 2K and 4K digital restorations of the team’s two best features, Sons of the Desert and Way Out West, plus 17 mostly essential shorts, along with over eight hours of commentaries, interviews, archival photos, posters and studio files, and rarities, such as “That’s That,” an outtakes reel compiled for Laurel’s birthday in 1937. This ceaselessly inventive gagfest is elevated by atypical grace notes — Laurel distracted at the wheel by the sight of a woman adjusting her skirt, and Hardy’s wife allowing herself a smile as she observes his futile rooftop efforts. Plus, we get Mae Busch as Hardy’s wife, who rebels when Hardy brings Stan home unannounced for dinner, and Thelma Todd as the next-door neighbor, whose husband, a policemen (Edgar Kennedy), will not understand the wholly innocent but nonetheless compromising situation she’s in when she offers to cook for the boys and burns her dress in the process. In Laurel and Hardy’s world, out of chaos comes only more chaos, leaving Hardy sitting alone and rained upon in the burnt-out shell of what was once his home, maintaining what is left of his dignity with a look that says, “This might as well happen.A rare moment of marital bliss in the Hardy home is shattered by the arrival of Laurel and his wife.