Stan & Ollie

“Mild” and “gentle” are words typically used to describe laxatives, douches and Buicks. Also, my particular brand of lovemaking, which is also sometimes referred to as fast-acting. That may or may not be what you want in a laxative. It all depends on why you took it in the first place. If you have the last piece of the puzzle your angry wife has spent two months working on up your ass, you probably want to get it out on your own before she does it.

Again, it all depends on what you’re into.

The movie Stan & Ollie is gentle and mild. If it were a car, it would be a Buick Lacrosse, wafting below the speed limit on balloon tires and big springs from point A to point B, occasionally slowing to look at a decorative mailbox or a planter of begonias. It would have a box of tissues on the package shelf and a bumper sticker for some obscure Catholic radio station in the window.

I’m not saying this is a bad movie. I’m just saying it’s gentle and mild, doing its business without much drama or excitement. Maybe that’s appropriate, though, since subject matter were the masters of a gentle and mild comedy. Their gags did not risk their lives the way Buster Keaton’s did, and they weren’t crass or mean like W.C Fields.

The movie takes place in 1953, long after Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) were at their peak of fame and fortune. They were the most popular comedians of the 1930s. Decades later, though, they are old and largely forgotten. After all, this was before there were TV and Internet to keep stuff exposed forever, and people discovered that baby’s blood kept them young forever.

Old is not useless, though. I tell myself that every day because age creeps up on us all. There are only so many days you can look in the mirror and tell yourself you’re just as sharp, quick and strong as you were yesterday before you know it’s a lie.

Laurel and Hardy still want to be useful, to make movies and be loved. In their advanced age and with health issues, they embark on a revival tour of England in an effort to remind the world they exist, and to spur the interest of a movie studio in a Robin Hood parody they want to make. The tour gets off to a slow start, but relentless self-promotion helps it gains steam until they are packing theaters again. All that hard work takes a toll on the old men, though, along with the arrival of their wives, who don’t get along. Old feuds bubble to the surface. The two men bicker like an old married couple, vowing their dislike for each other.

Oliver has a mild heart attack and is told he cannot continue. Stan tries, but can’t do it without his old partner. The truth is exposed. Stan and Ollie love each other, and are incomplete without each other. Oliver cannot stand to see his partner suffer and against doctor’s orders, he finishes the tour.

If this doesn’t sound like much of a cliffhanger, it’s not. There are no twists and no surprises to Stan & Laurel. You get that gentle and mild ride quality you expect from a Buick. Maybe sometimes that’s good enough. After all, a million senior citizens can’t all be wrong, can they?

The movie could have had more drama or more comedy. There are plenty of controversies in Laurel and Hardy’s lives hinted at in the movie, such as when Laurel left a studio in a dispute over money and Hardy stayed and made a movie with another comedian. Or, the womanizing, divorces and boozing that happened over the years. And Laurel and Hardy had some of the funnies gags of their time. This movie isn't a celebration of their foibles or hijinks, though. 

Stan & Ollie is a celebration of their friendship. While the lack of drama or laughs could have been a total fucking drag, Coogan and Reilly save it by making something out of not much. I felt something for these two old men fighting mortality, finances and insecurity together. They’re better because of each other and that’s because Coogan gives Stan the right amount of brittleness and ego, while Reilly makes Oliver just lazy and indifferent enough. Beneath, that, though, Coogan and Reilly make it clear these are decent men.

The women who play their wives, Nina Arianda as Ida Laurel and Shirley Henderson as Lucille Hardy, get more laughs and have better lines in their feud. Maybe that’s because they are allowed to be ruder and snippier. What the movie does well, though, is show how they love their husbands in their own ways and will protect them.

The movie hardly conveys why Laurel and Hardy were great comics. It doesn’t dwell on the past and only includes Laurel and Hardy movie clips over the end credits. A kid watching this would just think it’s just a couple of old men telling corny jokes and wheezing. Generally, that’s only appealing to other old men, and I guess someday I will be one of them.

Maybe someday I’ll have a Buick, and maybe someday I’ll just want to get from Point A to Point B comfortably and safely. No drama, no muss, just familiarity. There are worse ways to go, I suppose. Three Fingers for Stan & Ollie.