Pie-Eyed

An interesting and satisfying movie on several counts. First and most important, it is funny. Second, this was the year Mr. Laurel finally figured out who his movie character actually was: he went back to his days when he was understudying Chaplin in the Fred Karno pantomime troupe and did the solo drunk act, as Chaplin had in ONE A.M. Clearly, the characters -- Chaplin's drunk and Laurel's drunk -- are related. however, if I were to ask which is the best movie of the two, I would have to claim it is this one. Laurel, at his peak, was the better gag technician than Chaplin and he does it with fewer props than Chaplin: no haunted Murphy beds, no clocks with pendulums that obstruct an entire wall, no herd of stuffed animals as Chaplin used in ONE A.M., just a slightly askew set of evening clothes that shrink in water, a rolled umbrella that seems to be made of rubber and a couple of relatively innocent players to be caught up in the madness.

Do yourself a favor. See this one.

The main reason to watch this short comedy might be to see the character that Stan Laurel plays. In just a couple of years, he and Oliver Hardy would start to develop their soon-to-be famous duo of comic personalities, and Laurel's role here might show some small but definite steps in that direction.

Laurel plays a drunk character of the kind that was somewhat overused in the short comedies of the 1910s and 1920s, but in his performance you can also see some of his own developing persona. The good-natured naiveté and the occasional blank face that became part of "Stanley", along with a couple of gestures somewhat similar to those he would often use later, are present here. That's not to say that the character is recognizable as a whole, or even that the character itself is all that interesting - since it isn't. There is just enough to make Laurel himself visible underneath the drunk act.

The film itself is at least average, and perhaps better than average. The first scene, in the night club, is probably the best portion. It features good timing and a couple of good gags, with Laurel's performance getting as much as possible out of the material, without making it too exaggerated. The rest of the film sometimes contains long stretches of ordinary material designed to set up one or two gags that are only mildly entertaining anyway.

So Laurel has to carry a lot of it himself, with a little energy from Glen Cavender and a handful of decent comic gags.