Laurel und Hardy: Zwei ritten nach Texas

This is truly one of the funniest movies ever made. I'll never look at another block and tackle without a chuckle. And of course that groovy soft shoe shuffle and the Trail of the Lonesome Pine are gems - cinema history. Stan and Ollie weren't just slapstick geniuses. Theirs was a subtle blend of visual, acute observational and surreal comedy that has rarely been matched and never beaten. This film exemplifies their craft perfectly and shows touches of where, twenty to forty years later, the Goons, Monty Python, Tommy Cooper and The Comic Strip were coming from. After seeing this I recommend Sons of The Dessert, their other feature length masterpiece.

"In James W. Horne's WAY OUT WEST, Laurel and Hardy go west to deliver the deed of a gold mine and promptly get themselves embroiled in duplicity and horseplay. They are perhaps the most unlikely knights in shining armor, that all depends on how feckless the villains are, James Finlayson's crooked salon owner Mickey Finn is outright cartoonish, which leaves Sharon Lynn's bejeweled salon singer Lola do the heavy lifting of manhandling Laurel with tickle torture, you can guess who is wearing the pants in that household.

WAY OUT WEST gifts audience with Laurel and Hardy's iconic synchronized dancing accompanied by the Avalon Boys, later the comical rendition of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine", and Laurel's hat-eating, thumb-lighting gags, but its storyline is way too unremarkable to bother mentioning and the pratfall antics are deployed ad nauseam (I can imagine even the sinkhole would sigh resignedly)."

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What did Rosina Lawrence's dying father expect when he entrusted Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy to deliver the deed to a gold mine to her in Way Out West? I mean even in death was his judgment that seriously impaired?

The boys are up to the necks in it in the town of Brushwood Gulch when they try to do their good deed. In fact Ollie's up to it even before as Stan innocently dumps the freeloading Ollie who is snoozing in a travois drawn by their donkey while Stan is guiding the poor animal. Dumps Ollie in a creek mind you. Serves him right actually.

The boys arrive in town and wouldn't you know it, they tell bartender James Finlayson what their mission is. So the quick thinking Finlayson gets his wife Sharon Lynne to pose as Lawrence and the boys sign the deed over to her.

Later on they discover their mistake and the rest of the film is spent trying to make up for their mistake and get the deed to the rightful owner. Of course it's one mishap after another, including Stan lighting Ollie's thumb on fire. Don't ask how.

Everybody looks like they're having a great old time in Way Out West. Finlayson is a terrific Snidely Whiplash, Lynne does a great imitation of the kind of brassy dame that Gladys George or Binnie Barnes had a specialty in, and Lawrence is a fabulous little Nell heroine.

Way Out West is one of Stan and Ollie's best feature film comedies. It even got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Scoring. But I still wonder, wasn't their anyone else Lawrence's father could get for such a mission?

Laurel & Hardy travel out west to Brushwood Gulch to keep a promise to an old prospector . On his death they must take a locket and the deeds to a valuable goldmine to his daughter. When they arrive at the saloon where she works, the saloon owner sees a chance to get rich and gets one of his dancers to pretend to be the daughter, Mary. When they discover their mistake the pair try to get the deeds back but are driven out of town. They plan to return that night and rob the safe of the deeds and return them to Mary.

I have been watching plenty of Laurel & Hardy shorts recently but it's been many years since I saw anything longer from them, so it was with great joy I saw this in the TV schedule and settled down to watch it. My first observation as a short watcher is that it is surprisingly close to the consistency of the shorts, even if it is over three times longer than those. The plot is detailed enough to provide several really good routines but also plenty of really enjoyable gags.

Of great enjoyment to a fan of the shorts were several comic scenes that showed them to be more than just funny men. The soft shoe shuffle is the oft-quoted favourite and is quite amusing but the songs are all enjoyable without intruding on the comedy in the way some films of the time did. The most pleasurable aspect is Hardy's voice – he is a charming baritone and is really surprising. Laurel is good too and the pair are cool on `Trail of the Lonesome Pine'.

Both Laurel & Hardy's delivery is impeccable and the routines and gags are only made better by their talent. Finalyson is excellent and for me is easily the king of that double take/squint thing that he does so very well! Lynn and Lawrence are both OK but are really secondary characters behind the men.

Overall fans will rightly love this film and it may also win over some who have yet to experience the pair. It has music, dance, routines and gags – all delivered by the great duo themselves. What more do you need?

Laurel and Hardy really don't have to DO anything to make me laugh. When they are on my screen, I howl. "West" is, in my opinion, their best film. Laurel did the cutting and he put in some sound effects that punch up the action. The spoken lines are hilarious: Stan, speaking to an imposter: "We want to know why you are not Mary Roberts!" The ridiculous dance in front of a blatantly obvious rear-projection screen is a gem. I have this movie on VHS and have run it many times. It does not get old.