Hop to It!

Not too long ago I bought a cheap VHS tape entitled "Just Rambling Along" supposedly featuring Laurel and Hardy. Being somewhat familiar with their output and not recognizing this title, I made the agonizing decision to part with a whole dollar and buy it. Upon playing it, I identified the film as HOP TO IT. Of course, Mr. Laurel was nowhere in the cast, making the packaging of this product criminally deceptive. Even worse, the quality is terrible. It looks like it was duped from an 8mm film source. It did have a somewhat appropriate musical score. Actually, in all seriousness, the tape is worth a buck if you just want to get an idea of what the movie is like. In my opinion, it is a decent but unexceptional short. IMDb should add JUST RAMBLING ALONG as an alternate title for this film, which incidentally was the name of a 1918 Stan Laurel film!

This is definitely a "lesser known" comedy short from the 1920s. The only reason I saw it was because it was on a DVD by Kino Films featuring non-Laurel and Hardy shorts featuring Ollie. They are interesting and historically important, but also generally average to below average for the style film. Compared to shorts by Chaplin, Keaton, Arbuckle and Lloyd, they are definitely a step below them in quality and humor. Also, the accompanying music was pretty poor by the standards of other silent DVDs. I ended up turning OFF the sound due to the inappropriateness of the music to set the proper mood. But, despite this, they are still worth seeing.

I've gotta be honest about this short. It was the last of 8 on this DVD and by the time I got to it, I was pretty bored with the mediocrity of 7 of the 8 shorts. So, it is possible the film might be A LITTLE better than a 4--but certainly, if this is the case, no better than a 5! The film is a pretty standard short about an incompetent bellboy. Nothing especially interesting and there are certainly MUCH better silent shorts out there.

"Hop to It" is one of a few films that paired off comic Bobby Ray with Oliver Hardy, who would of course go on to greatness with Stan Laurel. Here, they play a couple of bellhops who cause mischief at a hotel, and that's about the whole of the plot to b found in this short subject.

Interestingly, while Ray gets more scenes and the opportunity to participate in more comic payoffs, his character here is essentially a comic nonentity. An early title card tell us he is dim, and after that we glean only that he can run around and do competent slapstick and confusion-humour. Oliver Hardy, however, speaks volumes of character with a gesture; by this point he's become and excellent comic actor and we get a much better sense of his character. It unmistakeably has a lot of the wonderful imperiousness and self-importance of his later "Ollie" persona as well, though the bellhop in this film is not so harmless -- he's clearly a bully and a thief.

The material they have to play is pretty good, and Hardy especially plays it with excellent timing. At the end the film makes a sudden jump from a lightly above average series of comic situations in a hotel to a bizarre thrill-picture sequence involving more jumping-off-buildings than is probably recommended.

Hop To It finds Oliver Hardy teamed with Bobby Ray, a Stan Laurel like silent comedian who just doesn't quite get it. The two are bellhops who proceed to make holy hash out of the hotel business.

Ray seemed to lack just the right spark to team with Hardy though the film has some funny moments. Such as poor Ray getting the wrong room number and he keeps bathing a choleric old man. Also tying their shoes together so that he and Ollie trip each other up. Certainly Laurel like moments, but Ray does not have the innocence quite down.

At the end an exasperated Hardy is chasing Ray up a flagpole and then starts shaking it. Ray at that point was doing more Harold Lloyd than Stan Laurel.

It's a funny enough short, but it would have been so much better with Stanley.