I've been a fan of Laurel and Hardy all my life, but there came a point in their movie career where their distinct style of humor simply ceased to be. In their earlier films, you had Stan with his endless Malaprops, prompting Ollie's looks of disgust into the camera; the physical comedy was brilliant, and often led off by the duo selecting the most illogical and idiotic course of action possible for the bizarre circumstances in which they found themselves.
Example: You are delivering a piano. The door of the house is locked but you can get in through an upstairs balcony door. Do you put one person in through that door, then have him come downstairs and open the main door for you to bring in the piano? No, you try to bring the piano in through the upstairs door, using a flimsy canopy as a mounting point for a block and tackle hoist! That is just an example of the kind of humor which made Stan and Ollie famous.
Well, all that seems to be gone in this movie. I got halfway through watching "Great Guns" and realized I had wasted as much time as I had spent watching it to that point - and I turned it off. (If I have to watch more than half-way through a movie to get past the part that is an utter waste, it's too far gone to redeem itself for me.) While Stan and Ollie still looked much like their old selves in this film, it's like they were almost afraid to be those two zany characters from their GOOD movies, like they didn't feel like they could pull it off... like maybe they didn't believe in themselves anymore? Laurel and Hardy had a period in which they made brilliant comedies, where you couldn't help laughing out loud at the sheer lunacy of their antics and the disasters which resulted. Like Stan trying to move a dump truck so Ollie could get his wife's new convertible out of its parking space, and Stan works the lever that makes the dump truck unload tons of dirt onto the car. Or Stan visiting Ollie in the hospital and sitting on a hypodermic needle full of tranquilizer, and Ollie ending up hanging out the window by his cast-wrapped leg. Those were Laurel and Hardy films which made them popular and famous, deservedly so. This movie, Great Guns, is all talk talk talk, most of that not very funny, and little else. Yawn. I'm a big L&H fan but I know I will never bother watching this film ever again. Phew! It's a sad movie, not a comedy. It's simply not very funny, and very little like the earlier films they'd made.
Example: You are delivering a piano. The door of the house is locked but you can get in through an upstairs balcony door. Do you put one person in through that door, then have him come downstairs and open the main door for you to bring in the piano? No, you try to bring the piano in through the upstairs door, using a flimsy canopy as a mounting point for a block and tackle hoist! That is just an example of the kind of humor which made Stan and Ollie famous.
Well, all that seems to be gone in this movie. I got halfway through watching "Great Guns" and realized I had wasted as much time as I had spent watching it to that point - and I turned it off. (If I have to watch more than half-way through a movie to get past the part that is an utter waste, it's too far gone to redeem itself for me.) While Stan and Ollie still looked much like their old selves in this film, it's like they were almost afraid to be those two zany characters from their GOOD movies, like they didn't feel like they could pull it off... like maybe they didn't believe in themselves anymore? Laurel and Hardy had a period in which they made brilliant comedies, where you couldn't help laughing out loud at the sheer lunacy of their antics and the disasters which resulted. Like Stan trying to move a dump truck so Ollie could get his wife's new convertible out of its parking space, and Stan works the lever that makes the dump truck unload tons of dirt onto the car. Or Stan visiting Ollie in the hospital and sitting on a hypodermic needle full of tranquilizer, and Ollie ending up hanging out the window by his cast-wrapped leg. Those were Laurel and Hardy films which made them popular and famous, deservedly so. This movie, Great Guns, is all talk talk talk, most of that not very funny, and little else. Yawn. I'm a big L&H fan but I know I will never bother watching this film ever again. Phew! It's a sad movie, not a comedy. It's simply not very funny, and very little like the earlier films they'd made.