A con artist posing as a doctor fleeces a high society man in Venice and makes the acquaintance of another con artist posing as a countess trying to fleece him. Naturally they fall in love. Travelling to Paris, they stake out the purse owned by a perfume company heiress and when the purse goes missing, a reward is put up for it. Returning the stolen item collecting the reward, and insinuating themselves into her lives as both secretary and typist, a romantic triangle begins and the man must chose between the heiress and the thief. "Trouble in Paradise" is a delightful and sexy concoction from director Ernst Lubitsch and his screenwriter Samson Raphaelson. Known as a master of sophisticated comedy, Lubitsch is largely forgotten today. However when this film was released in 1932, it was what many considered to be the first talking romantic comedy, and from this film you can see the work of many great successors including Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, and Woody Allen. Working it a pre-code Hollywood, the film is crackling with one-liners and sexual innuendos, as well as innovative filmmaking techniques such as keeping the camera on a clock as we here what happens in the course of an evening. Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins (the con artist), and Kay Francis (the heiress) play their roles with such chemistry and assurance. "Trouble in Paradise" is one of those rare classic films that manages to be both highly influential as well as wildly entertaining.

Laurel and Hardy decide to start a transport business and their first job is to move a piano up an extremely high flight of stairs. That's really all the plot detail need to be known, and although the movie is as simple as that, the concept is milked by the duo for all its worth resulting in consistently uproarious results. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made a wonderful duo and couldn't have been more different, Stan thin and proper from England and Ollie rotund and slobbish from Georgia. Perhaps it was these differences that helped to make them so funny here. I loved how sometimes you could see the pratfalls coming a mile away and other times they surprised you, both with the same hilarious results. I also love the work of Billy Gilbert as Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen whom the duo come to annoy. Of all the so called comedies I've seen so far this year combined, they do not even begin to approach the belly laughs of this wonderful and hilarious 30 minute film.