Busy Bodies

While not as infamous as The Music Box, I feel certain that this must be one of Laurel and Hardy's best-remembered shorts. Lasting just under 20 minutes, it's arguably their most physical work, with an almost non-stop array of sight gags.

A benefit of a Laurel and Hardy season on television is it gives you insight into characteristics that you'd forgotten. For instance, I never remembered Stan as being a grass, but he's always stitching people up (Pardon Us, Pack Up Your Troubles, et al) and here he gets a man thrown out for smoking. Stan's fight with the same man is the most hilarious moment of the eleven films screened during a Christmas season, but then this one is packed with many laugh-out-loud moments. That a film that is over seventy five years old can still produce such amusement is astonishing, but the duo are extremely good at what they do, and here at the top of their game. I won't give away the rest, but suffice it to say that Ollie's struggle with a sink and their car's clash with a sawmill is two of the funniest things I've seen in ages.

This is probably the only movie that makes me cry of laughing each time I see it and I have seen it hundreds of times! Laurel & Hardy are really getting it on in this one.The way that Hardy gets "tortured" is unbelievable but never over the top.Just watch the scene when Laurel slams the door against Hardy after which Hardy slams the door back and gets a huge bucket on his head and then again the door,hilarious! Of course there is also the usual "in the camera looking" by Hardy(the scene with the sigar!).Busy Bodies is for me their best short feature and equals their long masterpiece Way Out West (10/10). Laurel & Hardy are truely the Kings of slapstick comedy,if you haven't seen this one you haven't lived! 10/10

It's amazing how many times Laurel and Hardy's best comedy short involve rather mundane scripts where the action is mostly confined to one setting. Instead of feeling claustrophobic, films such as this one and BIG BUSINESS are wonderful throughout and brilliant in their simplicity.

Stan and Ollie are on their way to work and they talk about how much they love their new job as carpenters. It seems they are working at some sort of combination lumber yard and carpentry shop--which is really hard to imagine as this job would take both talent and brains--something the boys are sorely lacking! At first, the predicaments they get into are pretty mundane--such as Ollie getting his hands stuck in a window frame or getting a paint brush glued to his chin. However, as the film continues, the outlandish gags get bigger and crazier and the film ends with several of the most memorable stunts I have ever seen. However, so as not to spoil the film, I think it's best just to let you see it yourself.

See this film. It's highly original (even though Stan and Ollie did several shorts where they are fixing or building things, this one is certainly unique) and amusing throughout--a truly standout film.

A Laurel & Hardy short feature with a good variety of gags, "Busy Bodies" has the two raising havoc in a woodworking shop. The shop's tools, materials, and workers furnish good background material to the pair's own valiant but doomed attempts to make themselves useful. There is a wide range of comic material, from old standbys like Ollie getting conked in the head repeatedly by two men carrying a board across his path, to clever ideas like the "radio" in their car. There are also some very funny interactions with the shop's other workers.

This is a funny short comedy that all Laurel & Hardy fans will enjoy.

This is one I remember from childhood, and while the passing of a few decades means Laurel and Hardy's antics might no longer be absorbed with the unquestioning adoration and unbridled willingness to laugh at anything and everything they do, it's still easy to forgive them for the occasional lapse of quality. The boys knew what their audience liked and wanted and they delivered it over and over again: the same facial expressions, the same reactions, the same phrases. What sets them apart from other comedy teams whose collection of prepared reactions and responses haven't stood the test of time is the inventiveness they managed to maintain for most of the 1930s.

The boys are employed by a saw mill in this one, and at the beginning of the film all is well with the world. Of course, this being a Laurel & Hardy film, such a state of affairs isn't allowed to last and it isn't long before they're trading punches with workmates and Ollie has a paint brush glued to his chin. Stan barely utters a word for the first five minutes which is, perhaps, an indication of how this film could easily have been made without sound. All the gags are visual (apart from the unique car radio).