Radiomanía

Even in the early 1980's, Laurel and Hardy was still funny to a diverse audience. It was a pleasure coming home from school to watch their short subjects, and in spite of the 50 year difference, they were as funny and relevant to a multicultural audience in the 80's as they were in the 30's.

"Radiomanía" is the Spanish language variation on "Hog Wild". I don't say it's the same film, as Laurel & Hardy's foreign language films generally ran longer than one short...and often were two shorts merged into one. Why did the team make Spanish, Italian, German and French versions of their films? Well, thye were super-popular...world famous. And, the studios didn't generally dub the films in various versions but had the team deliver their lines phonetically. But this is NOT the case with the version of "Radiomanía" I found on YouTube...where the voices clearly are NOT Stan and Ollie's but were dubbed. It's the only one of their foreign language films I have seen like this...the others all seem to have the boys actually delivering their lines in various languages...rather poorly I might add! And, it has no added material.

In the case of "Radiomanía", the studio used the original English language version and only needed a bit of dubbing because the film is more visual and relies more on slapstick than many of their other movies and shorts.

So is it worth watching? Of course. After all, it IS Laurel & Hardy, "Hog Wild" is one of their best shorts AND you can pretty much understand the film even if your knowledge of Spanish is limited. But to make it easier, you might want to first watch "Hog Wild" and then immediately after watch this film. Overall, very funny and about as much fun as the original. And who would have thought watching two idiots installing a radio antennae could be this funny and violent?? I loved the final scene with the car...which you have to see to believe.

The radio isn't working at Ollie's house, so he enlists the help of Stan, and gets up on the roof to fix the ariel, with disastrous (of course) consequences.

Made in 1930, and it's still as joyously funny and uplifting as it was back then, what a wonderfully amusing and imaginative short this is, remember, when the world gets tough, just pop Laurel and Hardy on, it's guaranteed to make everything better.

Favourite sequence has to be the moment where Ollie climbs up the ladder, and Stan accidentally puts the car into drive, the madcap following moments are hilarious.

The Stunts are pretty impressive, you wonder exactly how much these guys did themselves, incredible.

It's still a joy to watch.

8/10.