Les bons petits diables

One of Laurel & Hardy's most creative short features, "Brats" has both comedians playing a dual role. Stanley and Oliver are baby-sitting for little Stanley and Little Oliver, played by themselves, with very imaginative use of over-sized props and settings. The adults try to play checkers and play pool, not always without comic difficulties, while meanwhile the children get into one problem after another, requiring occasional correction from the adults. This short feature has a lot of creative material, clever settings, good cross-cutting, and several very good laughs.

Any fan of these two great entertainers should find this movie to be very amusing.

The 'Brats' of the title are mini-Laurel and mini-Hardy, working with over-sized props to give the impression of kids into everything from a bathtub to a wooden chest of drawers.

We find their dads playing a game of draughts (with suitable cheating) while the sons cause havoc and noise. After they are banished upstairs, the kids manage to half-wreck the place and set up a predictable, but still funny, pay-off.

For the facial reactions, the clever set-ups, and Mr Hardy's singing (trying in vain to get the tots to sleep), 'Brats' scores high on the comedy list. There's genuinely good stuff in this short.

I have to give credit to the people who ran the Laurel and Hardy productions; they were quite creative. In one episode the guy's play their own sisters. In this one they play their children as well as the adults. This called for scenes to include furniture and props much bigger than normal. It comes off very well. Of course little Stannie is as big an idiot as his father and the same for the other "little" guy. Of course, they get into big trouble by doing exactly the kinds of things their adult halves would do. There are some really nice scenes of high slapstick. The ending is great. By the way, the wives are away. They are out doing target practice.

I loved this movie... it was really funny and clever. Mostly I am writing this because I had noticed a couple of possible errors in others' comments here, and so I wanted to respectfully point them out: In reply to the comment from "planktonrules" about the tub faucet's turning itself off: I don't think the water was supposed to look/sound as if it actually shut off --- I think it merely stopped making its rushing noise of coming out of the spout because the water level had become as high as the spout. In reply to the comment from "Theo Robertson" about the grownup men and their boys only once appearing in the same shot together: actually, there was a scene in the very beginning of all four people in the same room, but they are far enough away that you can't see their faces all that well. Maybe in that shot, the two children were just young actors made up to look enough like Stan and Ollie to pass as their kids for just that one brief sequence?

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were of course already big kids in their movies but this time they also play kids.

Beside the roles of the two young children, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, of course also portray the two fathers. This guarantees some hilarious sequences between the two kids and the two fathers. Most of the time Laurel & Hardy are playing against, well, Laurel & Hardy. It makes some of the sequences work out all the more hilarious.

For the sequences with the children the sets are made to look larger. So large toys, a large bed and a large bathroom, among other things. It makes the movie good looking and above all also very original.

Of course Laurel & Hardy look nothing like children, after all they both were close to 40 years old at the time of this movie. Yet it becomes very believable because of the acting of the two with each other. They both help each other out in this movie to make their performances work out as both good and hilarious.

The movie features some really great and funny sequences, such as Oliver going done a staircase on a roller-skate and Laurel & Hardy being washed away by a large flood wave. The movie has some truly unique and hilarious comical moments in it that makes "Brats" an original as well as an hilarious comedy short. It also features plenty of enough slapstick to please the fans but it above all is a movie that should entertain just basically everybody.

Not just your typical average Laurel & Hardy comedy short!

8/10

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