I fanciulli del West

Laurel and Hardy really don't have to DO anything to make me laugh. When they are on my screen, I howl. "West" is, in my opinion, their best film. Laurel did the cutting and he put in some sound effects that punch up the action. The spoken lines are hilarious: Stan, speaking to an imposter: "We want to know why you are not Mary Roberts!" The ridiculous dance in front of a blatantly obvious rear-projection screen is a gem. I have this movie on VHS and have run it many times. It does not get old.

Laurel & Hardy travel out west to Brushwood Gulch to keep a promise to an old prospector . On his death they must take a locket and the deeds to a valuable goldmine to his daughter. When they arrive at the saloon where she works, the saloon owner sees a chance to get rich and gets one of his dancers to pretend to be the daughter, Mary. When they discover their mistake the pair try to get the deeds back but are driven out of town. They plan to return that night and rob the safe of the deeds and return them to Mary.

I have been watching plenty of Laurel & Hardy shorts recently but it's been many years since I saw anything longer from them, so it was with great joy I saw this in the TV schedule and settled down to watch it. My first observation as a short watcher is that it is surprisingly close to the consistency of the shorts, even if it is over three times longer than those. The plot is detailed enough to provide several really good routines but also plenty of really enjoyable gags.

Of great enjoyment to a fan of the shorts were several comic scenes that showed them to be more than just funny men. The soft shoe shuffle is the oft-quoted favourite and is quite amusing but the songs are all enjoyable without intruding on the comedy in the way some films of the time did. The most pleasurable aspect is Hardy's voice – he is a charming baritone and is really surprising. Laurel is good too and the pair are cool on `Trail of the Lonesome Pine'.

Both Laurel & Hardy's delivery is impeccable and the routines and gags are only made better by their talent. Finalyson is excellent and for me is easily the king of that double take/squint thing that he does so very well! Lynn and Lawrence are both OK but are really secondary characters behind the men.

Overall fans will rightly love this film and it may also win over some who have yet to experience the pair. It has music, dance, routines and gags – all delivered by the great duo themselves. What more do you need?

This is truly one of the funniest movies ever made. I'll never look at another block and tackle without a chuckle. And of course that groovy soft shoe shuffle and the Trail of the Lonesome Pine are gems - cinema history. Stan and Ollie weren't just slapstick geniuses. Theirs was a subtle blend of visual, acute observational and surreal comedy that has rarely been matched and never beaten. This film exemplifies their craft perfectly and shows touches of where, twenty to forty years later, the Goons, Monty Python, Tommy Cooper and The Comic Strip were coming from. After seeing this I recommend Sons of The Dessert, their other feature length masterpiece.

Laurel and Hardy have to deliver the deed of a valuable gold mine to a girl called Mary Roberts (Rosina Lawrence).James Finlayson is the bad guy of the movie.He plays a man called Mickey Finn and when he hears the story of these two fellas he decides to fool them with the saloon singer Lola Marcel (Sharon Lynn).They introduce Lola as Mary Roberts to these two dummies.And they buy it.Way Out West from 1937 is a classic comedy from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.It's one of their best comedies among with many others.It's enjoyable to watch the slapstick comedy with these two comedians of last century.This movie includes many funny parts that made me laugh and I just couldn't stop.Just like Stan couldn't after Lola tickled him.Watch Way Out West if you want to see Laurel and Hardy at their best.Nobody does it the way they did.

There are plenty of great comedies that are better-made, more innovative, and more artistically satisfying than "Way Out West," but pound for pound this one has made me laugh the most over the years, repeatedly and consistently. Great clowns like Chaplin and Keaton made themselves into Everyman underdogs; the Marxes and Fields were wise-acre anarchists; but Laurel and Hardy were, simply, overgrown children: exactly as innocent and cunning and kind-hearted and selfish and sincere as big kids in suits. They lacked the malice which underlay Abbot & Costello or the Three Stooges. When they warred with each other or outside parties they did so from an honest sense of being wronged, which then escalated to ridiculous and dangerous heights, all with exquisite timing. Their bouts of exasperation never lasted long; as they soon as they finished stomping on each other's hats and twisting each other's noses they would go back to the unquestioning comradeship of two school-kids who stick together for no other reason than that they always have and always will.

"Way Out West" is probably their best feature film, thanks to decent production values, a fun use of the period setting, a solid supporting cast, and a great mix of visual and verbal jokes. A river hides a pothole that materializes only for Oliver Hardy; a femme fatale wrests a deed to a gold mine from a helpless Stan Laurel by a dastardly bout of tickling (few things in movies are funnier than Stan Laurel laughing); the duo perform a gracefully silly soft- shoe dance; a thumb proves mysteriously flammable and a hat becomes briefly edible; Ollie's neck stretches out at least four feet before snapping back. Death is discussed: "Tell me, what did my father die of?" Stan, ever-helpful, replies: "I think he died of a Tuesday. Or was it a Wednesday?" Songs are sung, first by Ollie, in his melodious tenor, then joined by a startlingly basso Stan. (A bop on the head changes him to a ladylike soprano.) James Finlayson makes wild puffs and snorts of disgust at the camera. And Stan's exposed leg stops a speeding stagecoach with as much ease as Claudette Colbert's stopped a truck in "It Happened One Night." And Ollie, beaming, and giggling and twiddling his tie to perfection, flirts with a highly disinterested lady by using the immortal line: "A lot of weather we've been having lately." It's all sheer bliss, a great movie comedy.