That’s another fine mess you got me into …
Stan & Ollie Cert tbc, 97 mins
Steve Coogan and John C Reilly, the stars of Stan & Ollie, clown around on the red carpet at the world premiere of the film about comic duo Laurel and Hardy outside BFI Southbank last night, before the closing gala of the London Film Festival.
Dir Jon S Baird Starring Steve Coogan, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda, Rufus Jones
There has never been – and may never be – a funnier line of dialogue in the history of cinema than “Excuse me please, my ear is full of milk.” Oliver Hardy says it in the 1934 short Going Bye-bye!, moments after taking from Stan Laurel what he believes to be a telephone receiver, but is in fact a tin of the dairy product in question, and holding it to the side of his head. He makes his apologies to the woman on the other end of the line, brushes himself down, irritably grabs the tin back from Stan, and pours in some more.
Keeping time with comedy this precise is a superhuman feat. But in Stan & Ollie, Steve Coogan and John C Reilly do it. When the two retrace classic sketches beat for beat, it is like watching art restorers bringing faded Caravaggios back to life. And when they showcase one never-beforefilmed skit, titled Birds of a Feather –a silent, absurdist waiting-room farce of doors to nowhere and missed connections – it feels as if they are dragging a previously undiscovered Old Master up from the basement.
Jon S Baird’s film retells the story of Laurel and Hardy’s 1953 tour of Britain and Ireland, post-prime, age-worn, with their partnership of 32 years fraying at the seams. They have two things still going for them: history and genius. But their closest allies and confidants are now their wives Ida and Lucille – good supporting roles sensationally well played as a mirrorimage double act by Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson.
This is a polished, revealing, accessible biopic, laden with nods and nudges to the glory days (which are dealt with in a 1937-set prologue that takes us from the boys’ dressing room to the set of their latest Hal Roach production, via one of those classic thronging-studio-backlot tracking shots), but with the good sense to zero in on an unobvious chapter of its title characters’ lives. And as these films often are, it seems determined to leave no audience member behind, often playing things bright and broad to a fault, from its score composed in primary colours to dialogue artificially peppered with pub quiz titbits.
But Coogan and Reilly make it essential at a stroke. Both do generous justice to their subjects: in appearance and manner, both are skin-pricklingly on the mark, and Reilly’s prosthetics are easily the equal of Gary Oldman’s Churchillian podge in Darkest Hour.
Both lead roles have been likewise artfully plumped with subtext. The script by Coogan’s Philomena cowriter Jeff Pope allows both actors to deconstruct the thornily conjoined nature of the duo’s success, while also addressing the almost existential question – previously tackled by Coogan in The Trip and its European sequels – of whether performer and persona can ever be parted.
Stan and Ollie keep lapsing into shtick as if by accident, through force of habit – and sometimes perhaps against their will. There is a great moment as they bicker on the deck of a ferry when Ollie frowns and asks “What would be my line here?”, and Stan casually ad libs a knockout.
Coogan often thrives in agonisingly close-to-home roles – again, see The
Trip, and Alan Partridge, obviously – but the distance here works immeasurably in his favour. His Stan is a portrait of a genius: a subtly played, deeply felt study of a man at odds with the world around him, yet so sharply attuned to its ridiculousness that he can somehow sum it up in a look, a stumble, a shrug.
It is eccentric, sad and stirring to the core. Oh yes – and incredibly funny, too.