From Soup to Nuts

This is a pretty good Laurel and Hardy short comedy - it's not as creative as their very best features, but it's definitely enjoyable, and it contains some good gags. The main thing that keeps it from being better is that in "From Soup To Nuts" you not only see most of the gags coming, but there are few surprises in how they play out. In their best comedies, you often don't know what's going to happen next.

The setup has Stanley and Oliver as waiters hired for a lavish dinner party in the home of a rich couple. There is plenty of good material in the setting, and most of the comedy ideas are funny enough in themselves. Anita Garvin also helps out quite a bit as the hostess, and she has a couple of running gags of her own. As with most Laurel and Hardy features, you can watch this more than once and still be amused at their antics.

This seems to be the earliest time that Stan Laurel & Ollver Hardy have had to encounter High Society as they are employed as waiters in a mansion in From Soup to Nuts. Because they hadn't been in this particular environment before, it's expected they wouldn't know how to behave in front of certain people. So, of course, disaster happens! There's also a young society lady played by Anita Garvin who keeps having trouble with a grape and her tiara, sometimes at the same time! Besides some of the food gags (as well as hat and plate ones), there's also Stan's taking some things literally which you'll get when you watch this as I just did on YouTube. So on that note, From Soup to Nuts is a fine L & H short directed by Edgar Kennedy, who's usually cast as their antagonist though not here. Next, I'll review Stan & Ollie's next encounter with the rich in Another Fine Mess.

"Some wiggler huh?" Oliver Hardy says while both he and Stan Laurel ogle Anita Garvin's swaying backside (and quite an ogle inducing backside it is).

Quite refreshing to see a pre-code comedy that shows that men were not indifferent to female charms despite what most films from 1935 to 1950-something would have us believe. Nothing smutty like you would see today. Just an appreciation of the female form in all it's glory.

And besides, it's Laurel & Hardy.

d:) d:)

From Soup to Nuts is an amusing two-reel comedy that many Laurel & Hardy fans regard with special fondness, thanks largely to the performance of Anita Garvin, a gifted comedienne who never received the recognition she deserved. Barely in her 20s when this film was made, Miss Garvin was given the plum assignment of playing the socially ambitious Mrs. Culpepper, "idol to the snobs," a classic New Money hostess -- in a tiara, no less -- who throws the sort of dinner party designed to show the world that the Culpeppers Have Arrived. The source of the recently-acquired Culpepper fortune is never revealed, but one look at Mr. Culpepper (6 ft. 5 in. "Tiny" Sandford) suggests that bootleg gin or perhaps concrete might be involved.

But where any number of other actresses might phone in a pompous Society Lady role such as this one, Anita Garvin shows us the insecurity under the pose, flashing quick nervous looks at her guests as if to say, "Am I doing this right? Or do they suspect I'm a fraud?" In a highly appropriate running gag, the lady's tiara keeps slipping down her forehead and falling over her eyes. Garvin is seen to best advantage during the extended, genuinely funny sequence in which she attempts to retrieve a stray cherry that rolls off her fruit cocktail and becomes stubbornly lodged under the rim of the sundae glass. At first, she tries to maintain proper decorum, but eventually becomes so involved in pursuing the wayward cherry that all pretense of refinement slips away. But any hope of dignity is a lost cause anyhow, since by that time hired butlers Laurel & Hardy have turned the party into a fiasco.

Stan and Ollie have an ideal comic premise to work with here: we know from the start that they're going to ruin this party, but, considering the host and hostess, what better party to ruin? A highlight comes when Stan misunderstands an order to serve the salad "undressed," and, reluctantly, strips down to his skivvies before bringing it in. (Today, this gag would be played without the skivvies, perhaps by Adam Sandler in a G-string; does that mean we're more sophisticated, or less?) Dishes are broken, soup is spilled, cakes are ruined, seams are split, and ultimately Mrs. Culpepper, "idol of the snobs," hauls off and belts Ollie, decorum be damned. In the end, I believe, her roots are showing.

An interesting footnote to this film: it was one of only two Laurel & Hardy comedies to be directed by "E. Livingston Kennedy," better known as Edgar, the boys' frequent nemesis in such films as Bacon Grabbers and Perfect Day. His venture into directing was brief, but the results are so felicitous (this was followed by You're Darn Tootin', a genuine L&H classic) that one wishes he could have worked behind the camera more often.

Definitely not the best silent Laurel & Hardy comedy short but like all Laurel & Hardy movies; it's all very enjoyable to watch.

The premise of the movie is simple (like it should be in a Laurel & Hardy movie) and relies on the mishaps of the two boys as inexperienced and of course very clumsy waiters, at a fancy dinner party and of course things go from nuts to nuttier, as the movie progresses.

The movie does has its tiresome, usual stretched out comical moments but some original well placed and timed humor as well, that was later also 'reused' in multiple other Laurel & Hardy movies. It doesn't make this movie one of the most hilarious ones but definitely one of the most defining and typical Laurel & Hardy comedy shorts. The movie is directed by Edgar Kennedy, who as an actor also starred along side with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together in multiple of their comedy films, before and after this movie.

In this case the movie definitely would had been a better one had it been a 'talkie' but alas, it doesn't mean that the overall end result is disappointing. This movie has plenty of entertaining slapstick humor to offer, that will surely shall please the fans.

7/10

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