Elefanti volanti

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.