Flying Elephants

This relatively early pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (not quite yet the team of 'Laurel & Hardy' as we know them) has a great deal of silly and goofy material - and it's practically impossible not to laugh as you watch it. Their casual, good-natured approach and the offbeat story material are the movie's most obvious features, but it is their skilled comic timing and the way they blend themselves in with the props, settings, and the rest of the cast that make it work.

It's a rarity amongst their movies in being set in the past - in this case, all the way back to the Stone Age. The setting and characters are presented in an exaggeratedly broad fashion, with plenty of clubs and the like. The two main characters contrast, with Hardy playing a more or less stereotypical caveman, and Laurel playing a character who would have been lucky to survive for five minutes in the real Stone Age. It adds some deliberately anachronistic medieval dialogue in the inter-titles, plus Hardy's "Flying Elephants" line, which comes out of nowhere.

It gets quite amusing at times, although it's very likely that lesser comics could not have made it work nearly so well. The two stars are joined by a good supporting cast, headed by their frequent foil James Finlayson. Viola Richard and Dorothy Coburn play a couple of attractive cave-women who are, nevertheless, not to be trifled with.

Even compared with their own best movies, this is quite unrefined and outlandish. But, at least if you like Laurel and Hardy, it's also pretty entertaining to watch.

Although both Stan and Ollie appear in this stone-age comedy, it isn't really a Laurel & Hardy film, because there's no sense yet of the boys working as a comedy partnership. They're simply a couple of stock comics Hal Roach decided to put together in a film. I believe Stan and Ollie appeared together in a number of films for Roach before he twigged to what a comedy goldmine he had on his hands.

Flying Elephants isn't a particularly funny comedy, although it does have a couple of amusing moments. It's decreed that any single man not married within 24-hours will be banished or killed – or both. So Stan and Ollie both go out, club in hand, to snare themselves a woman. Although stone age women seem to be in plentiful supply – everywhere you look there's one of them lounging around on a rock waiting to be picked up – both boys have trouble bagging one for themselves and end up going after the same woman – who just happens to be the daughter of James Finlayson, the victim here of a raging toothache.

The film is enlivened by some amusing special effects which, of course, look incredibly creaky today, but which also add a measure of charm to the proceedings. Stan probably makes more of an impression with his effeminate skipping and shaggy blonde wig, and it's interesting to see the gradual evolution of what would become the movie's greatest comedy duo.

Consider this prospect: Laurel & Hardy & Company are cavemen in furry pelts, running around in a remote canyon somewhere enacting what amounts to a silent version of The Flintstones. It doesn't seem to promise much in the way of great comedy, does it? A capsule summary of Flying Elephants might elicit groans from those who haven't seen it, and, what with comedy being so subjective and personal, there are probably plenty who've seen it and dismissed it as silly, juvenile, low-brow, etc. All I can say is: okay, guilty as charged, but I confess I really enjoy this movie anyway. Whatever else it may be, this two-reeler also happens to be quirky, fast-paced and off-the-wall, with a surreal wackiness that other comedians occasionally attempt but only rarely achieve. The Marx Brothers managed it in Duck Soup and for short stretches elsewhere, and the Fleischer Studio guys and Tex Avery made some cartoons that reached this level, but Flying Elephants is one of a kind. You can't just crank out stuff like this; the charming weirdness would wear thin pretty quickly.

Although Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy each appear prominently, Flying Elephants isn't really a "Laurel & Hardy" comedy as such. At the time this was made they were working together a lot but hadn't yet gelled as the team we recognize. Babe Hardy's performance is quite funny and oddly consistent with his later work; his special rhythms, gestures and expressions are there, despite the wig and the animal pelt he's wearing. But Mr. Laurel is the one who really gets freaky, hopping about in a curly blonde wig like a sissified Harpo Marx. The name of his character, Little Twinkle Star, tells the tale. It's anomalous in his career but nonetheless one of Stan's most energized and memorable turns, and a revelation to anyone who thinks he's a one-note performer. Stan has a fly-fishing sequence that is a comic high point, and it's just the sort of eccentric routine he could make his own.

Much of the plot-- such as it is --concerns courtship and marriage rituals among these cave dwellers. The movie begins with an absurd wedding ceremony which sets the tone for what follows. We learn that a royal decree has compelled the males to take wives, although, come to think of it, you wouldn't expect people in animal pelts to care much about formal nuptials. Much of the dialog (conveyed via title cards, of course) is in a strange, pseudo-Medieval slang. There are gags involving trained goats, animated fantasy beasts, a man in a bear suit, and an animal (a cow, perhaps?) disguised as a dinosaur. Speaking of dinosaurs good old Jimmy Finlayson is on hand, identified as a "wizard" apparently to justify a vulgar but funny pun utilizing the word. A decided bonus for modern viewers is the supporting cast of cute starlets in abbreviated cave flapper outfits, complete with bobbed hair, furry boots, and garters. A gorgeous young actress named Viola Richard plays Finlayson's daughter, Blushing Rose, and her close-ups can melt your heart decades after the fact. Viola seems to have vanished from the screen not long after this film was made, for some baffling reason.

Oh well. There are still prints of Flying Elephants around to amuse, amaze, and tickle those viewers open to this sort of thing.

This is a bizarre little film in pretty much every way I can think of off the top of my head. Although it technically is a Laurel and Hardy film, it was made early after they became a comedy pair and it was obvious from this film they still hadn't gotten the formula exactly right. Instead of the usual situation in which Stan and Ollie are friends, they are actually rivals in this peculiar film.

The film begins in the Stone Age. The king has made a rule that all men or they will be "banished and banned--or both". So all the bachelors are out trying to get married. And, in caveman fashion, this means meeting a nice lady and bashing her over the head with their giant clubs. The special effects and sets are pretty minimalistic, as the cast and crew went into the California hills and wore animal skin clothes. The only "prop" other than that was a fake Triceratops. While the film is almost entirely action-oriented (partly because it was a silent film), the film had very peculiar subtitles that had the actors speaking in old English?!

Overall, this is a very odd little curio and is not an especially good representation of the team's work. This isn't because the film is silent, as they made some excellent silent shorts, such as BIG BUSINESS or SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME?--it's more because the film is just weird and one long and not especially hilarious joke. Plus, the movie appears, in spots, to be pretty much filmed without a script and the actors just mug for the camera. For devout fans of the team, this is a must, but for all others, it's pretty skip-able and you should seek out some of their better shorts first.

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 a string of short films that saw the duo in the right direction, where there was more than before of the partnership (though not yet fully formed) and Hardy had more to do and became funnier and more interesting than in his earlier work, 'Flying Elephants' is very watchable but a bit disappointing. Not a misfire ('25 Minutes from Hollywood' was the misfire really for me of the previous outings) and not quite a step backwards, but not really a sign of things moving forward.

Laurel is great fun with great comic timing and Hardy also scores highly. There are a fair few amusing moments, it moves efficiently and there is a nice enough charm. The rest of the cast are solid, and the whole cast blend with the stone age setting very well.

'Flying Elephants' doesn't look too bad, do quite like the broadly rendered setting. The inter-titles dialogue is anachronistic but appealingly so.

On the other hand, the story is non-existent and there are instances of over-stretching. There is a lack of refinement in the storytelling, where it's a bit disorganised, and the effects are charming enough but also on the creaky side.

Also found for my liking that things do get a bit too silly and over the top, even for the broad setting. While Laurel and Hardy perform very well individually, they spend too much time apart and there is nowhere near enough of them together.

Concluding, nice and amusing but not near one of the best representations of the legendary duo. 6/10 Bethany Cox