Dick und Doof auf Heimaturlaub

This is a good short feature, among the best of Laurel & Hardy's silent movies and one of several of their popular 'retribution comedies'. Stan and Ollie are "Two Tars" on leave, who pick up a couple of women and then get involved in a series of slapstick confrontations. The second reel, set in a traffic jam, is particularly funny. Two of their best supporting players appear in Charlie Hall and Edgar Kennedy. If you like Laurel & Hardy's silent films, make sure to see this one.

TWO TARS (1928) is probably the best silent Laurel and Hardy ever made. It is hilarious. From the opening lamp-post gag, to the gumball machine, to the hilarious traffic jam and finally the train ending, this movie really is a rib-tickler. It's one of the greatest comedies ever made! Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine are the girls, and Edgar Kennedy is the motorist whose car Laurel and Hardy promptly tear to shreds.

When I was young my stepfather borrowed - for quite some time - this old movie-projector and some old short-reels that we used to watch on a white wall in his radio-shack (later I learned he borrowed it, not to entertain the kids but to watch old pornographic movies, but that's another story).

My favorite memory from this was "Two Tars", a 21-minute short with Laurel and Hardy, and ever since it has been my all-time-favorite comedy short. I will not dwell on the reason for this, only tell those who haven't seen it that it contains what has to be the wackiest traffic-jam in the history of movies! Every time I come across it on TV it just cracks me up how a small quarrel ends with the motorists literally TEARING their cars apart! It has to be one of most brilliant examples of crazy-comedy put together, masterfully staged by it's director James Parrott.

Not surprisingly, Leo McCarey who originated the story for "Two Tars", five years later directed the mother of all crazy-comedies: the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup".

A must see!

Laurel & Hardy are once again sailors in this silent short from the early days of their partnership. The relationship between them is pretty much fully-formed by now, and the tit-for-tat format of their rucks with those who displease them (or whom, more often, they displease) is already established. On shore leave, they rent a car and go off in search of girls. They find a likely pair attempting to retrieve sweets from a sidewalk dispenser, and despite inevitably scattering the sweets all over the street, the boys somehow manage to entice the ladies into their car.

It's not long before they find themselves at loggerheads with other drivers as they find themselves stuck in a traffic jam, and soon cars are being systematically destroyed as tempers fray. The film is pretty good and there's quite a few laughs scattered throughout.

TWO TARS has gotten a deserved reputation as being one of the funniest of the Laurel & Hardy short comedies (and certainly among the best of their silent comedies) due to the last half of the film. Initially Stan and Ollie are on furlough from the navy, and meet two young ladies (Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine). After some typical Hardy small talk (in which he drops his close relationship to Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur), he and Stan decide to rent a car and take the girls for a drive in the country. Unfortunately their car ends up in a traffic jam.

Keep in mind that this was only 1928, and the expansion of American automobile use (from the days when the car was only the toy of the rich or the object of early racing figures like Barney Oldfield and Edward Vernon Rickenbacker) dated back only to 1914 when Henry Ford's Model T was put on the assembly line. By 1928 nearly 15 million of Ford's car was on the road - and there were other car companies too. And here we have a film (a short film comedy) which is about a traffic jam. Modern problems are always mirrored in the movies.

The series of confrontations L & H have are with equally grumpy motorists like Edgar Kennedy (whose front tires and fenders the boys manage to pull off in timed unison). Cars backs are dumped off, or they are reduced to accordions on wheels. Every possible disaster that could befall a 1928 car is shown. And the police are fairly powerless to do much, except to watch in amazement (at the conclusion) of the parade of mangled cars. And it is, surprisingly, very funny indeed.