laurel and hardy collectors edition dvd review

There is NOTHING here from the films which Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made separately from each other. There is NOTHING here from the silent films Stan and Ollie made for the Hal Roach studio, even though some of their best work was done during that period. Jay Ward's movie tells us nothing at all about Laurel & Hardy, and it consists only of footage from the most widely-seen Laurel & Hardy films. The difference is that Robert Youngson's compilation films contained rare silent-film footage which we weren't likely to see anyplace else, and Youngson's wisecracking narration managed to include some genuinely informative content about the actors in his retrospectives.

'The Crazy World of Laurel & Hardy' looks suspiciously like a cynical attempt to cash in on Youngson's success. In the 1960s, Robert Youngson enjoyed a great deal of success with several feature-length compilations of silent-film footage. It doesn't really work as entertainment, and it certainly doesn't tell us anything useful about Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy.

Jay Ward and co-producer Roach appear to have created this thing purely to make a few bucks off the kiddie trade. I'm a fan of Stan and Ollie, and I'm also a fan of Jay Ward, but this movie is nothing to cheer about. In 1967, Ward cobbled together a feature-length compilation of clips from various Laurel & Hardy movies, which was released by Hal Roach Jnr (son of Laurel & Hardy's original producer) as 'The Crazy World of Laurel & Hardy'. Jay Ward, the creator of Bullwinkle, has earned my undying respect for proving that intelligent scripts plus bad animation will make a better cartoon than superb animation with bad scripts.

Laurel and hardy collectors edition dvd review