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With most Laurel & Hardy movies it is more that I admire them than that I really laugh. With this one there were some very good laughs, especially in the part where Stan Laurel makes his own version of Samson and Delilah.

Oliver Hardy has probably the smallest part in this short which is about a woman who wants to make her husband jealous. She tries to do this with Laurel, who is a handyman. Hardy is the butler. Pretty funny Laurel & Hardy short.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were comedic geniuses, individually and together, and their partnership was deservedly iconic and one of the best there was. They left behind a large body of work, a vast majority of it being entertaining to classic comedy, at their best they were hilarious and their best efforts were great examples of how to do comedy without being juvenile or distasteful.

After 'Duck Soup' indicated a step in the right direction for early on in their careers after their previous two short films underwhelmed somewhat (especially '45 Minutes from Hollywood), Laurel and Hardy's fourth outing featuring them both 'Slipping Wives' sees a step backwards. It is nice and entertaining, more than watchable in an inoffensive way, but later offerings make far better use of Laurel and Hardy and their partnership and are much funnier. 'Slipping Wives' felt like they were not yet fully formed and yet to properly find their feet.

'Slipping Wives' looks quite good and hardly the work of an amateur. Priscilla Dean is charming and amusing and Laurel is great fun, especially in his re-telling of 'Samson and Delilah'. 'Slipping Wives' is worth watching for him alone.

There are amusing and charming moments, the aforementioned moment and the climactic chase finale are the highlights, and the pace is generally very energetic.

Hardy however has a relatively unimportant and nowhere near as interesting role and his material is inferior to that of Laurel's. A waste, and even more so that 'Slipping Wives' misses the chance to utilise their chemistry properly. 'Slipping Wives' doesn't really feel like Laurel and Hardy, due to Hardy having little to do and their chemistry barely existent, and more a Priscilla Dean vehicle featuring the two.

Not everything is funny, too much of it being predictable and not being sharp enough in timing. The story is very slight and erratically paced, sometimes too busy while not getting going soon enough.

In summary, worth a look but hardly a Laurel and Hardy essential. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Priscilla (Priscilla Dean) is married to an artist named Leon (Herbert Rawlinson), who doesn't show much interest in her or anything romantic, ignoring her requests, no matter how intimate or personal, at the dinner table while he reads the morning paper. Priscilla decides that the only way to try and win his affection is to make him jealous. Things take an unexpected turn when a paint salesman (Stan Laurel) shows up at the door to solicit his products to Leon, to which Priscilla intercepts his request by trying to coerce Stan into making Leon jealous, all the while the couple's butler Ollie (Oliver Hardy) finds himself in on the whole thing.

Such is the premise for the Laurel and Hardy gem Slipping Wives, which features enough substantial physical comedy and ribald situational humor to make the twenty-three minute short film fun and memorable. Laurel and Hardy team up before they were billed as a regular duo to deliver the same kind of comedy that made them and their feature films famous. Consider the scene where Stan and Ollie get in a fight, with Ollie ending up in the bathtub, in classic, silent comedy fun. Scenes like this provide an ostensibly-stunted premise with more life and gusto than one would initially expect.

Laurel and Hardy, regardless of how physical they can get with each other, still make for one of the most fun silent duos in history, effortlessly carrying out solid situational pranks and giddy scenarios that find new ways to be joyfully silly but touching and memorable. Slipping Wives is simply no exception.

Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Priscilla Dean, Herbert Rawlinson, and Albert Conti. Directed by: Fred L. Guiol.

A line or two to supply due credit:

This little film is indeed very important in the saga of Laurel and Hardy, but I don't like to see Priscilla Dean slighted. The lovely and lively woman gives a performance in this film which which must be considered outstanding in any silent comedy. She delivers carloads of presence and is not afraid to make hilarious comic use of her very pretty face. And she DOES have the lead, after all!

Viewed the above titled movie recently. This was one of the films Stan & Ollie made before they were teamed officially. It shows some bits of "business", that would become trademarks of theirs in later films. ie: Oliver being the know-all who constantly corrects and intimidates Stan. Also, the plot of their being used to make a husband jealous was used some years later in another film where they were greeting card salesman, and no less than Charles Middleton was the supposedly neglectful husband. This shows the early development of a pair of classic comedians. That is why I gladly give it a 7.