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"Slipping Wives" (1927) is an exploitative, though inviting, title to a comedy whose lead is Priscilla Dean of all people, but whose comedy is led by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy! Also in the plot are Herbert Rawlinson and Albert Conti. Begins a tad slowly until Stan Laurel shows up. Wowzer!! He and Hardy immediately get into it with Hardy taking a - well, a paint bath. Then Laurel is invited to stay to liven up events when Dean feels she's being slighted by her husband. He's already missed her birthday. So...she wants Laurel - yes, Laurel of all people - to make plays at her in front of her husband. It all leads to mix-ups that are genuinely hilarious. This early combo of the two (L & H) begins to show the character each will develop over the years into the duo we learned to cherish.

I must admit that I've never cared as much for the features of L & H, but I've really come to appreciate these early seminal silents of the pair. This one lasts 23 minutes, and it's really a lot of fun. I'm a Priscilla Dean fan, but I've never seen her do comedy before. Usually she's a tough of some sort, and she can usually hold her own against even gangsters like Lon Chaney, Sr.! Here, she's a completely different type, and she's very good.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were comedic geniuses, individually and together, and their partnership was deservedly iconic and one of the best there was. They left behind a large body of work, a vast majority of it being entertaining to classic comedy, at their best they were hilarious and their best efforts were great examples of how to do comedy without being juvenile or distasteful.

After 'Duck Soup' indicated a step in the right direction for early on in their careers after their previous two short films underwhelmed somewhat (especially '45 Minutes from Hollywood), Laurel and Hardy's fourth outing featuring them both 'Slipping Wives' sees a step backwards. It is nice and entertaining, more than watchable in an inoffensive way, but later offerings make far better use of Laurel and Hardy and their partnership and are much funnier. 'Slipping Wives' felt like they were not yet fully formed and yet to properly find their feet.

'Slipping Wives' looks quite good and hardly the work of an amateur. Priscilla Dean is charming and amusing and Laurel is great fun, especially in his re-telling of 'Samson and Delilah'. 'Slipping Wives' is worth watching for him alone.

There are amusing and charming moments, the aforementioned moment and the climactic chase finale are the highlights, and the pace is generally very energetic.

Hardy however has a relatively unimportant and nowhere near as interesting role and his material is inferior to that of Laurel's. A waste, and even more so that 'Slipping Wives' misses the chance to utilise their chemistry properly. 'Slipping Wives' doesn't really feel like Laurel and Hardy, due to Hardy having little to do and their chemistry barely existent, and more a Priscilla Dean vehicle featuring the two.

Not everything is funny, too much of it being predictable and not being sharp enough in timing. The story is very slight and erratically paced, sometimes too busy while not getting going soon enough.

In summary, worth a look but hardly a Laurel and Hardy essential. 6/10 Bethany Cox

I don't really regarded this movie as a Laurel & Hardy comedy short. After all the first billed star of the movie is Priscilla Dean. Stan Laurel does have a big role in the movie as well but Oliver Hardy on the other hand plays a disappointingly small and not significant enough role in the movie.

Fred Guiol never really has been the best or most original director of silent comedy shorts. This movie is typical for his style, its formulaic, simple but it serves its purpose. Thye movie does nowhere reaches the level of comedy excellence but there are some sequences and moments in the movie that still make this movie an above average one to watch. The movie nowhere surprises but it does entertain, so why complain about it?

I always found Stan Laurel to be the better comedy actor, than his counterpart Oliver Hardy and he does indeed once more proofs this by his role in this movie. He times well and his mimic is wonderful. This really is more of a Laurel movie than it is a Laurel & Hardy movie.

Nothing too impressive but a well made and entertaining movie to watch nevertheless.

7/10

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Priscilla (Priscilla Dean) is married to an artist named Leon (Herbert Rawlinson), who doesn't show much interest in her or anything romantic, ignoring her requests, no matter how intimate or personal, at the dinner table while he reads the morning paper. Priscilla decides that the only way to try and win his affection is to make him jealous. Things take an unexpected turn when a paint salesman (Stan Laurel) shows up at the door to solicit his products to Leon, to which Priscilla intercepts his request by trying to coerce Stan into making Leon jealous, all the while the couple's butler Ollie (Oliver Hardy) finds himself in on the whole thing.

Such is the premise for the Laurel and Hardy gem Slipping Wives, which features enough substantial physical comedy and ribald situational humor to make the twenty-three minute short film fun and memorable. Laurel and Hardy team up before they were billed as a regular duo to deliver the same kind of comedy that made them and their feature films famous. Consider the scene where Stan and Ollie get in a fight, with Ollie ending up in the bathtub, in classic, silent comedy fun. Scenes like this provide an ostensibly-stunted premise with more life and gusto than one would initially expect.

Laurel and Hardy, regardless of how physical they can get with each other, still make for one of the most fun silent duos in history, effortlessly carrying out solid situational pranks and giddy scenarios that find new ways to be joyfully silly but touching and memorable. Slipping Wives is simply no exception.

Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Priscilla Dean, Herbert Rawlinson, and Albert Conti. Directed by: Fred L. Guiol.

Viewed the above titled movie recently. This was one of the films Stan & Ollie made before they were teamed officially. It shows some bits of "business", that would become trademarks of theirs in later films. ie: Oliver being the know-all who constantly corrects and intimidates Stan. Also, the plot of their being used to make a husband jealous was used some years later in another film where they were greeting card salesman, and no less than Charles Middleton was the supposedly neglectful husband. This shows the early development of a pair of classic comedians. That is why I gladly give it a 7.