Les Joies du mariage

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short. The Boys have each married the other's twin sister - both of whom have the same personality as her brother. A simple dinner party to celebrate their one year wedding anniversaries turns into a cat fight between the girls - which only proves that you can get double the chaos when it's TWICE TWO.

This is a hilarious little film, one of Stan & Ollie's best. They are perfect playing their female counterparts. Carol Tevis dubs the voice of Mrs. Hardy; Mae Wallace that of Mrs. Laurel.

It has been a year since Laurel and Hardy married each other's sisters. They stay at home for a nice quiet meal, but the tensions between this close knit family bubble up as things go wrong during the meal.

At the start of the film I felt that the duo dressed in drag would be a gimmick that wasn't used well, happily I was wrong and they use it well. It isn't just them mugging in girl's clothes, it is more a chance for them to play the same characters twice as, essentially, their sisters are them same as them! This works well and the dynamics between the two sisters are the same as between the two men.

The comedy is given a fresh feel by this mix, which is good because it is lacking in other areas. The banter is not at it's best and the physical work is not as imaginative as at their best. In their dual roles both Laurel and Hardy are good – the badly dubbed women's voices take a little getting used to but don't detract too much.

Overall this is an amusing short. Not their funniest short, but the twist of them playing each other's sisters helps freshen it all up a little bit.

Stan and Ollie have both married into each others family's, to celebrate their respective wedding anniversaries, dinner is arranged.

Seeing both Stan and Ollie in drag, side splitting, incredibly funny scenes, showing the two legends were happy enough to explore any avenue to get the laughs. It does seem somewhat strange that the guys would go for each others sisters, but it's true what they say, it's a funny old world.

Plenty of laughs to enjoy here, for such a short film, it really does pack in the laughs, still the best physical humour you could imagine.

Cleverly filmed, managing to get the dual characters on screen at the same time, in 1933 that was a real triumph.

The voice overs work a treat, they are so outlandish, so wonderfully over the top, they seem to capture the spirit of Laurel and Hardy very well.

It was fun to discover they Fanny and Sandy were as clumsy and accident prone as their respects brothers.

9/10.

I think this film has some amazing acting. As others have noted, Laurel plays himself and also his own sister. Hardy does the same. But - the women characters they portray are different to the male Laurel and Hardy. The women characters are not Laurel and Hardy "in drag". They really are playing 4 different people.

The dubbing of the women's voices is perfect, in my opinion. The women who dubbed the voices really capture the feeling of Laurel and Hardy. They are great. The syncronicity of the dubbing is awesome.

I also think the photography - scenes when the four characters are having dinner together - is great. They really create the illusion of four separate people talking and bickering.

I don't want to risk spoiling anything for anyone and so I will not describe any of the truly funny scenes featuring each of these characters.

Suffice it to say that the film is very funny.

I hadn't seen this L&H "Twice Two" before but I find myself re-watching it on my DVR as a better effort by them than some of their other better-known short films. Yes, the dubbing of the womens' voices is not perfect but that is hardly a problem. There is so much more that IS good: The sound effects are great - when Stan's wife (played by Ollie) gets a cake dumped on her - twice - or when eating supper and she claims the noise she is making is not her slurping the soup, but "it's my asthma..." and then lets loose with a noise that sounds like an elephant snorting through a ditch pipe. Of course Ollie's reaction to his sister's 'asthma' noise is a puzzled stare into the camera.

Stanley was great too, playing Ollie's wife. You have to watch closely but he made some of the best faces I've ever seen him do.

I'll never say it's their very best but this is much better than some L&H things that I've seen. Late in their career Oliver Hardy seemed to be too fat to do the physical comedy and the stories were not even believable from a comedy standpoint. This early short is funny and I enjoyed it.