Recensione di hte-trasme

"Hop to It" is one of a few films that paired off comic Bobby Ray with Oliver Hardy, who would of course go on to greatness with Stan Laurel. Here, they play a couple of bellhops who cause mischief at a hotel, and that's about the whole of the plot to b found in this short subject.

Interestingly, while Ray gets more scenes and the opportunity to participate in more comic payoffs, his character here is essentially a comic nonentity. An early title card tell us he is dim, and after that we glean only that he can run around and do competent slapstick and confusion-humour. Oliver Hardy, however, speaks volumes of character with a gesture; by this point he's become and excellent comic actor and we get a much better sense of his character. It unmistakeably has a lot of the wonderful imperiousness and self-importance of his later "Ollie" persona as well, though the bellhop in this film is not so harmless -- he's clearly a bully and a thief.

The material they have to play is pretty good, and Hardy especially plays it with excellent timing. At the end the film makes a sudden jump from a lightly above average series of comic situations in a hotel to a bizarre thrill-picture sequence involving more jumping-off-buildings than is probably recommended.