Flying Elephants

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

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.

"Flying Elephants" (1928), a Laurel and Hardy short made in the last years of the silents is also one of the comedy's duo most bizarre film. The title itself is logic deifying, as the movie itself.

The story is weak: in the stone age, the king declares that all males must marry within twenty-four hours. Around this slender plot, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy do their best they can but, as they spend most of the picture apart (which is strange, as their first "official" movie together, "Putting Pants on Philip", had been made two years earlier), the result is never really satisfying and the high pint of the picture is when there is a shot of animated elephants with wings on flying into the distance, hence the title. The elephants were animated by Walter Lantz and is possible the most surrealist aspect in all of Laurel and Hardy's movies.

It's not a great short by "the boys" but there are several good gags that will reward Laurel and Hardy film buffs.

One of the last movies in which Laurel and Hardy appeared before they officially became a team was "Flying Elephants", casting them as cavemen vying for a woman. Stan and Ollie were still perfecting their routines, so the comedy here isn't what we're used to for them; there's a lot of bonking heads with clubs. It's enjoyable enough for its brief run time, but just remember that it's more low-key than most of Laurel and Hardy's work.

After years of reading about this early Laurel & Hardy short in Randy Skretvedt's "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies", I finally managed to watch this Stone Age-set comedy on Hulu as linked from IMDb. Unlike their later classic work, here Stan and Ollie aren't together much and when they are, they're fighting over a girl they want to marry. As Skretvedt said in the book: "They appear to be as much of a team as Popeye and Bluto." Still they, and James Finlayson, provide much laughs whether hitting each other (or anybody else) on the heads or doing some kind of face dance. I also liked it when Stan landed on a cactus. So on that note, Flying Elephants is worth a look if you're an L & H completist. P.S. The stunning woman playing the girl-Viola Richard-was from Lafayette in my current home state of Louisiana. The title refers to Ollie's talking to another female about elephants flying to the South this time of year as we see just that after he mentions it. That animation was provided by Roy Seawright in his first of many accomplishments at the Hal Roach studio. And this was the last L & H short distributed by the Pathe Exchange as Roach could no longer tolerate the movie company's inept distribution methods. He'd eventually choose M-G-M for his future dealings.