Vigilantes aéreos

In the small town of Huxton, incompetent business owners Laurel (Stan Laurel) and Hardy (Oliver Hardy) intends to join the war effort. Only non of the military services are willing to accept them. They return home with no jobs and no store. They sign up to be air raid wardens. The boys try very hard but they are also very incompetent.

It's the first of two movies the boys made at MGM. The good news is that they are the stars of the movie. The bad news is that they're not doing their best work. The physical gags are basic and a little slow. The boys need to write some better gags. I still love them and that's why I like this movie. They are sweet and fun and that's what they make this film... even with the Nazis.

In 1940, L&H quit Hal Roach after twelve years of partnership that yielded some of the finest comedies ever made. Their departure for 20th Century Fox was meant to be a step towards more creative control and freedom in the process of making films; alas, the opposite was the case. Their first two films under the new production company showed that L&H should, by Fox's definition, appear in front of the cameras and leave cutting, directing etc. to the professionals. Consequently, these two films were pale shadows of their great Roach-produced companions. Desperately, L&H sought a newer rainbow at MGM but were to be disappointed again. Even the best scenes in this film, "Air Raid Wardens", like two tit-for-tat sequences with their old colleague Edgar "Slowburn" Kennedy, lacked the spontaneous and improvised look of similar scenes´in, say, "Bacon Grabbers". Likewise, other slapstick moments in ARW like a poster-hanging bit have a rather mechanical look and are destroyed by poor editing. Yes, Stan's creative genius was sadly missing behind the camera.

Furthermore, the whole patriotic atmosphere of the plot doesn't fit L&H's style one bit.

And still this excuse for a comedy, although far, far from features like "Way Out West" or "Sons Of The Desert", emerges as one of the better post-Roach films after all; firstly, in contrast to most of the other later films, the romantic subplot is pretty much in the background and Stan & Ollie remain the main attraction. Secondly, there are at least a few scenes which REMIND you of L&H's better days; there are no such scenes to be found in "A-Haunting We Will Go" or "Nothing But Trouble", for example.

So "Air Raid Wardens" is hardly a pain to sit through but is so vastly inferior to their Roach films that you regret once more that they left him for good in 1940.

Frustrated by their lack of artistic freedom at 20th Century Fox, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy hoped that MGM would provide them with more leeway. Superficially, their situation improved. Charlie Rogers and Jack Jevne, who had worked with Stan and Ollie during their glory days at Hal Roach, helped work on the script for the MGM production. The director, Edward Sedgwick, had a knack for slapstick and had worked with the Boys on the Roach film PICK A STAR. The scenario depicted Laurel and Hardy as sympathetic innocents instead of the obnoxious boneheads at Fox.

The result, AIR RAID WARDENS, is an improvement over their last Fox picture A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO, but not a significant one. As the title suggests, the Boys are air raid wardens on the home front during World War II. This situation has considerable comedic potential and indeed the film does generate some laughs, particularly a scene where the Boys unsuccessfully try to control a dog at a town meeting. But many promising gags are marred by sluggish pacing. The lack of background music, a hallmark in the Hal Roach films, further hampers the gags.

As in A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO, the villains, a group of Nazi spies, are too serious to effectively serve as antagonists for the slapsticky characters of Stan and Ollie. It is actually disturbing to view such sinister, humorless characters threaten the Boys. MGM should have followed the example of the Columbia short subjects department which pitted the Three Stooges against Keystone Cop-like Nazis in such wartime films like THEY STOOGE TO CONGA and HIGHER THAN A KITE.

Even more distressing is the studio's misguided attempts to generate audience sympathy for Laurel and Hardy. When Stan and Ollie are at their lowest ebb, they wallow in humorless self-pity. In the classic Hal Roach films, no matter how badly things were, Laurel and Hardy never felt sorry for themselves and this was part of their popular appeal. In this film when the Boys say lines like "I guess we're not smart like other people." it isn't moving, just depressing.

Those who haven't seen the team's Hal Roach films will probably find AIR RAID WARDENS satisfying. But those who have enjoyed such classics like SONS OF THE DESERT and WAY OUT WEST will find this film a letdown.

This movie is too serious for the comical Laurel & Hardy that we are so accustomed to and love so much. The movie tries to give the movie depth with as a result that Laurel and Hardy are not given enough opportunities to show their silly antics. I consider this movie to be more of a WW II movie than a comedy.

This movie is a real piece of American WW II propaganda. The boys give everything to get enlisted, so they can do their part for Uncle Sam during the war, against the Japanese. And Laurel & Hardy chasing and fighting Nazi-spies? Come on! That just doesn't feel right. The movie really is too serious for Laurel & Hardy standards. The movie tries to create a movie with a real story and even attempt to give it all some depth. But that's not what Laurel & Hardy should be about. We want to see some silly naive harmless fun. Yes, of course the movie does have its comical and slapstick moments but the combination of it with the serious undertone of the movie just doesn't feel right.

It does provide a fairly good view of how the average American town coped with the ongoing war, so from an historical point of view this movie still is an interesting one to watch.

No must-see for the Laurel & Hardy lovers but also not a completely unwatchable movie. It really does have its moments and it never gets dull. Too bad that it's brought all way too serious and because of this Laurel & Hardy are also never really given the opportunity to shine, like the way they used to.

6/10

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An unashamedly jingoistic Laurel and Hardy movie that sees them try to join the war effort. Watching loveable everymen Stan and Ollie put up signs saying "gone to fight the Japs" troubles me ideologically. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but seeing such crass propaganda as Ollie saying, "There's a job to be done right here at home" fills me with a sense of dread. And it's weird hearing English Stan talking about "Our Country" and uttering such trite platitudes as "We'll do anything that Uncle Sam wants us to do, won't we, Ollie?"

What's most unsettling is that Stan and Ollie look so old and ill you no longer laugh at their slapstick but fear for their safety. Direction by Edward Sedgwick is quite nice in terms of angles and camera motion, but completely at odds with the material. More to the point, sometimes poor shots and editing made the old Laurel and Hardy films funnier. With more professional standards they seem like an anachronism. The tiredness of the two leads (Stan in particular, who liked to be more involved in the creative level) comes through, and it all has a jaded, rehashed feel. I laughed just four times in the film's 64m duration, and while I cannot imagine any L & H vehicle plumbing the depths of a * movie, this is easily the weakest of their work that I've seen so far.

There's a lifeless atmosphere throughout, and Stan and Ollie's rapport is virtually non-existent for once. Some bits, like Stan sleeping in a gas mask amuses, but the chemistry is almost entirely absent. If they'd made the film half the length yet with the same material it might have meant a pacier, snappier, product. In fact, it took me a while to put my finger on it, but what the picture misses more than anything else is incidental music, something that was synonymous with Laurel and Hardy. Their violent fight with an awkward houseowner – including ramming a pipe down his throat and smashing his head into a fusebox – does recapture some old glories, but it's too little. Most unsettling scene is the one where Stan can't write his own name. Laurel & Hardy are always dumb, but here it's supposed to be funny that they have learning difficulties? The climactic final pay-off is particularly notable for being nowhere near good enough. The film doesn't so much end, but slump to a halt.

Intriguingly, when Air Raid Wardens was released with Nothing But Trouble on one tape in 1993, the blurb on the back told you the ending. How thoughtful.