V'là la flotte

TWO TARS (1928) is probably the best silent Laurel and Hardy ever made. It is hilarious. From the opening lamp-post gag, to the gumball machine, to the hilarious traffic jam and finally the train ending, this movie really is a rib-tickler. It's one of the greatest comedies ever made! Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine are the girls, and Edgar Kennedy is the motorist whose car Laurel and Hardy promptly tear to shreds.

This is one of the best Laurel and Hardy shorts made, even though it is a silent one. Big Business came out a year later and has the same premise. It has been argued that BB is the funnier of the two. I think Two Tars is funnier because it is much more relevant today as it deals with frustrations found in a traffic jam.

What makes these Laurel and Hardy silents a bit funnier to me then when they were first released is, since I know what their voices sound like, I can imagine them saying the lines when I read the title cards. Their voices matched them perfectly.

It's a shame here in the United States that there are not box sets of their shorts on DVD.

When I was young my stepfather borrowed - for quite some time - this old movie-projector and some old short-reels that we used to watch on a white wall in his radio-shack (later I learned he borrowed it, not to entertain the kids but to watch old pornographic movies, but that's another story).

My favorite memory from this was "Two Tars", a 21-minute short with Laurel and Hardy, and ever since it has been my all-time-favorite comedy short. I will not dwell on the reason for this, only tell those who haven't seen it that it contains what has to be the wackiest traffic-jam in the history of movies! Every time I come across it on TV it just cracks me up how a small quarrel ends with the motorists literally TEARING their cars apart! It has to be one of most brilliant examples of crazy-comedy put together, masterfully staged by it's director James Parrott.

Not surprisingly, Leo McCarey who originated the story for "Two Tars", five years later directed the mother of all crazy-comedies: the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup".

A must see!

This is a good short feature, among the best of Laurel & Hardy's silent movies and one of several of their popular 'retribution comedies'. Stan and Ollie are "Two Tars" on leave, who pick up a couple of women and then get involved in a series of slapstick confrontations. The second reel, set in a traffic jam, is particularly funny. Two of their best supporting players appear in Charlie Hall and Edgar Kennedy. If you like Laurel & Hardy's silent films, make sure to see this one.

Part of the beauty of this perfectly paced classic comedy is not just it's gradual compounding of incident but how resonant it's plotting is today. Who likes traffic jams? Nobody! Stan and Ollie seem almost prescient to have tapped into a vexation that plagues us even now; maybe more than ever on today's superhighways that still cannot accommodate the flow of modern commuting. It is not so much the individual performances that matter here, but the over-all building of pace and piling on of incident. I think of this film every time I'm tangled in bad traffic; so will you, but please resist the temptation to rip the fender off of the car alongside you -- it may be mine.