The Finishing Touch

Finishing Touch, The (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Laurel and Hardy play finishers who are offered an extra $500 if they can finish a house in one day. The boys set out to make the extra money but soon a nurse (Dorothy Coburn) and a cop (Edgar Kennedy) start getting in their way. This silent short is a rather mixed bag as it features a lot of funny moments but the comedy isn't really ever hysterical but instead just mild laughs. The majority of the film goes for slapstick comedy, which includes Hardy stepping on nails, Laurel tripping over boards and that type of stuff. The cop of course plays the rival to the boys who keeps getting caught up in their madness and taking most of the abuse. Kennedy is quite good in his role but it's actually Coburn who steals the film when she decides to beat up the boys because of how much noise they're making.

THE FINISHING TOUCH, a silent short featuring Laurel & Hardy and shot in 1928, features one of my favourite gags ever put on film: Ollie insists on carrying a handful of nails in his mouth, with predictable results. Yes, it's entirely silly and doesn't even get close to realistic, but nevertheless the execution and acting on the part of Hardy make this one of the funniest things I've seen.

Elsewhere, THE FINISHING TOUCH is a very good effort from the twosome. As in all of their best plots, they play a couple of workmen, here trying to build a 'dream home'; what transpires will surprise nobody. The gags are laboured, occasionally forced, and of the most basic slapstick, and yet they work, and work, and work. The only downside is that this is a silent, so it misses all of the crashing sound effects that would have added immeasurably to the experience.

In 'The Finishing Touch', directed by a master of slapstick (Clyde Bruckman) and supervised by a pillar of American comedy (Leo McCarey), Laurel and Hardy have fully developed their film personalities. The plot, that reminds Keaton's `One Week' and The Three Stooges `The sitter-downers', is merely an excuse for bringing up the best of the duo's explosive chemistry. The power of their humor relies not in the impact or unawareness of a gag, but in a skillful preparation of the comic situation. Laurel and Hardy's best trick is the anticipation of an effect and the audience's involvement in its prediction. Repetition is fundamental and the pace and timing of the build-up a hard to match one.

This has got to be one of Laurel & Hardy's funniest silent comedies. They play a pair of labourers hired by a desperate builder to fit windows to a house. This would be difficult enough for the boys, but an added complication is the fact that the house is directly opposite a hospital, meaning that they must try to carry out their duties in near silence.

There are some beautiful sight gags in this one: Stan looking around in bewilderment for a pail he has inadvertently hooked onto the end of his shovel, Stan (again) carrying both ends of an improbably large plank, and Stan (yet again) attempting to saw a plank with a wobbly saw. It's real schoolboy stuff, I know, but it still had me howling with laughter. Edgar Kennedy, master of the slow-burn, plays the hapless cop whose attempts to ensure the boys keep quiet prove futile. The name of the nurse who thinks nothing of using a few well-aimed punches in order to keep the peace escapes me, but she's pretty cute. Be sure to see this one if you get the chance.

There is little I can add to the comments offered by the other posters. However, when viewing this film I do see Stan and Babe working on becoming the masterful Babes in the Woods characters we have come to know them. Their timing and interaction is never less than astounding and their fearlessly effective telegraphing of a gag reveals a mastery of their craft that I would argue no other comics have. There was one event that startled me about this film and helped me to appreciate it more. I have been informed by a reliable source that this film is used as a training film at the United States Department of Labor!!!!!!!!!!! What is it used to train people about? The common mistakes that ordinary people make in construction sites or similar situations that place themselves in danger. When film scholars label Stan and Babe as the perfect masters of Reducio ad Absurdum comedy, as they do, perhaps the use this early Stan and Babe effort found itself put to helps prove the point.