Enora Maurer

Personal enjoyment: ★
USA | Canada | UK
Director: Jon S. Baird
Starring: Steve Coogan (Stan Laurel), John C. Reilly (Oliver Hardy), Shirley Henderson (Lucille), Nina Arianda (Ida Laurel)
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Running time: 97 minutes

I want to publicly apologize to my friends who came to this movie with me and paid for (felt) two hours of boredom. Diplomatic swiss people as we are, we were still able to take some kind of personal enrichment from this movie, so as not to let it ruin our night out: at least now we know who Laurel and Hardy are and what they did!  We all weren’t really familiar with them, but mostly heard our parents talk about their sketches, so it’s good we can now include them in our common knowledge. 

What this movie mostly did for me, however, was reminding me why I don’t go to the theatre. I often find it boring and unfunny (but there are exceptions, of course. The best one being „Divertimento“, a swiss comedy duo). Of course, the sketches and what is considered funny is a little outdated, and if you’re not familiar with Laurel and Hardy’s works, you will most likely be bored, too. If you are a fan, however, you may very well enjoy seeing them on screen, doing sketches and working out their complex relationship (which could have been the part that attracted viewers like me, but unfortunately wasn’t quite played out interestingly enough; both Laurel’s and Hardy’s characters were rather flat). The best part of this movie was Ida Laurel’s character, who was the funniest to me!