Les deux flemmards

This is a very simple movie that relies on just one comical premise; a couple of grownups get fascinated at putting a puzzle together, while Oliver actually has a wedding to attend to. His own wedding!

At first this doesn't look like the most fun Laurel & Hardy short around but as the movie progresses it gets better and better. The more people show up putting the puzzle together, the more fun the movie gets. It's simple but it's still fun to see all those characters (Laurel & Hardy, a taxi driver, the butler, a policeman and a messenger boy) trying to put a puzzle together. It's simple childish humor but it works fun and effective. Also from the moment James Finlayson appears in the story, the movie begins to take a more slapstick form and the movie begins to features some fun slapstick moments, which of course eventually results in an huge brawl at the end of movie, between all of the characters.

Its simple comical premise works better than you at first sight would expect.

This really isn't the best written, most interesting or original Laurel & Hardy short but it's a perfectly fun, innocent movie to kill some time with.

7/10

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This short shows Laurel & Hardy at their best. Very little slapstick, as the comedy itself is played to the hilt. It's the essence of the running gag, the joke that keeps coming back, and back, and back, each time in a different way and funnier than before. The storyline is simple, and elegant - a common human obsession - getting addicted to a jigsaw puzzle - is first played rather normally, than slowly but inescapably grows and grows. This is like a Seinfeld episode before there was a Seinfeld.

It really shows their genius to create something like this, with a minimum of props and a direct storyline that doesn't get sidetracked, and all the byplay, including the wedding, eventually fits together like a jigsaw puzzle itself. Soon all the characters are involved in the puzzle, in one way or another, and it sucks them in like a giant vortex.

Obviously, this is one of my favorite shorts and is a good one to introduce someone to Laurel & Hardy.

We have been so used to viewing the boys on Video, that it was a real pleasure last evening to see it on the big screen at a meeting of the L & H Appreciation Society. This film is a real riot with all the gags centered around Ollie's Wedding present from Stan - a jigsaw puzzle.The gags work after almost 70 years because it could have just as well have been a Nitendo Game in one of the modern-day sitcom. If this film is available on Video, and if you are a L & H Fan, I strongly urge you to either rent or purchase a copy.

What kind of present would Stanley buy to Ollie, who will soon get married? He would probably buy something very important, like a jig-saw puzzle. The puzzle would be a great present, because if Ollie is married he and Stan could not go out anymore. They could still try to solve that puzzle. Good thinking, Stan!

In this film not much is happening, because that stupid present takes all interest from everything else. Much fun is then due to that absurd situation and therefore this film should be seen as a warning of the complete waste of time that a jig-saw puzzle induces. Laurel and Hardy have done much better films than this but even this simple story shows how proficient they were. This is still a good film, because they manage to keep it simple and not overdo anything.

Ollie is in the midst of being married, which will then lead to a big promotion when Stanley brings over this puzzle. The puzzle occupies everybody's time, thus the cause for all the laughs in this fun short with the puzzle becoming an object that is revered by all who come in contact with it. Wonderful sequence with 6 people hovering over the puzzle at one time, like children. Needless to say, Ollie didn't get married, but the film did end with Stan finding the missing piece to the puzzle.