Stan & Ollie

Synopsis: Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Hardy (John C. Reilly), once  the world's best-loved  comedy duo, attempt to reignite their film careers by undertaking a grueling live music hall tour of post-war Britain.

Clearly Stan & Ollie is going to have limited audience appeal but anyone who has at least a passing familiarity with and fondness for the slapstick film comedies of Laurel and Hardy will enjoy this small gem of a film.

Taking as its subject not the heyday of the comedy pair’s career in the mid 1930s, captured in a bravura scene-setting prologue but its swansong, a 1953-54 tour of Britain and Ireland when their star in Hollywood had well and truly sunk and the British Isles, still languishing in post-war doldrums, represented their last chance of restoring their fortunes and showing their boss, Hal Roach (Danny Huston) that they were still bankable stars. Initially it appears that even in the U.K. they are yesterday’s papers but gradually, through hard work, they manage to pull big houses. The toll on Ollie’s health, however, becomes too much, forcing the pair to acknowledge the fact that all things must pass.

Dividing its attentions between showcasing some of the duo’s stage routines (as well as creating a scene from their proposed Robin Hood spoof “Rob ‘Em Good”) and their backstage relationship, the film is both amusing and poignant with a flawless, picture-book production design capturing with affection the look of ration-book Britain in the 1950s, from sea-side beauty pageants to the Deco splendours of London’s Savoy Hotel.

Anyone familiar with Steve Coogan’s career will know what a talented mimic he is but here, evidently having dieted heavily, he gives a brilliant rendition of the British-born Laurel both in and out of character. John C. Reilly’s stellar career has always puzzled me but here, under some very good prosthetic make-up he too does a wonderful job of bringing Oliver Hardy to life. Even better, the two actors work together marvellously well with the film doing justice to Laurel and Hardy’s career.  I was not a fan of the director’s previous film Filth (2013) but he and writer Jeff Pope (Coogan’s co-writer on Philomena. 2013) depict the pair's final collaboration, fraught as it was with doubts and festering resentments but ultimately steeped in deep affection, to moving effect particularly in the third act as the two men grow weary under the strain of continuous performing. Only a couple of scenes, both involving luggage, seem like odd conflations of the pair's on and off screen characters. Shirley Henderson and  Nina Arianda provide entertaining support as the duo’s wives, Lucille Hardy and Ida Kitaeva Laurel, whilst Rufus Jones is droll as a small-time theatrical impresario, Bernard Delfont.

With some affinity with the story of 1940s Hollywood starlet Gloria Graham, captured so well in Film Stars Don’t Die In Hollywood (2017), Stan & Ollie is a small-scale but impressively well-turned work exploring the glorious but melancholy lives of those who live for their audience’s applause.

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