Love and laughs in ‘Stan & Ollie’
It’s Old Hollywood in all its glory. Movies,
You don’t have to be an expert on the legendary comedic duo Laurel and Hardy to fall in love with “Stan & Ollie,” starring John C. Reilly as rotund Oliver Hardy and Steve Coogan as clumsy sidekick Stan Laurel.
Most people know the bowler hatwearing duo whose career spanned more than 100 short and feature films in the classic Hollywood era. “Stan & Ollie” works on two levels – with plenty of nods and laughs for knowing fans (including comic icons Steve Martin and Jim Carrey) and as an achingly powerful story of friendship for those less familiar.
Here are five reasons to check out the well-reviewed film (91 percent of critics like it at Rotten Tomatoes) as it adds cities throughout January.
Yes, that’s John C. Reilly in the fat suit, and he’s perfect
The Golden Globe-nominated Reilly dons a fat suit to portray Hardy, the oversized alpha of the duo, managing to sing beautifully, dance gently and show perfect comic timing. (All is forgiven for Reilly’s movie duo misstep with Will Ferrell in “Holmes & Watson.”)
Reilly shows the beating heart behind Hardy’s often comic-bullying persona. “Oliver Hardy was actually a romantic; John C. Reilly is a romantic. They are made of the same stuff, so John could bring that to the screen,” says director Jon S. Baird.
The opening tracking sequence reveals Golden Hollywood at its prime
Old Hollywood is unveiled in true glory immediately (get to your seat!) as “Stan & Ollie” opens with a breathtaking, complicated tracking shot that depicts the duo shooting a movie scene. It ends with them breaking into a signature Laurel and Hardy dance routine.
It sets up the movie’s premise 16 years later, cutting to the duo’s drastically different reality. Their heyday has passed and the struggling team is starting a live theater tour of postwar Great Britain in 1953.
Steve Coogan scores a hat trick as Stan Laurel
The British comic actor captures the detail-fretting Laurel right down to the sadness in his eyes. But Coogan’s greatest moment is an homage to Laurel’s levitating hat trick, performed to impress a frosty receptionist.
Coogan leans back expertly against a wall and pretends to blow the hat into the air as the front lifts. “It’s not a special effect, it’s almost a magic trick. It took him a lot of time to do that right,” Baird says.
It highlights comedy’s gentler past and sharper present
The theater crowds in “Stan & Ollie” laugh uproariously at the duo’s innocent comedic routines. But their tame comedy underscores how humor has changed.
“You get smiles, not big laughs, in the comedic re-creations,” Baird says.
The biggest laughs come in the pairing of the duo’s loving, protective wives, Lucille Hardy (Shirley Henderson) and Ida Kitaeva Laurel (Nina Arianda), who join their husbands on tour. The banter is electric when they’re on the screen.
The scenes are “a bit more acerbic, quick-witted and more the comedy we have today,” Baird says.
Friendship endures in the end
Get the hankie ready for well-deserved happy tears. Through pratfalls and career stumbles, “Stan & Ollie” somehow sticks the thoughtfully executed, ultimately triumphant ending that shows the duo’s magical bond survived above all else. Laurel and Hardy come to understand what’s important isn’t the fame, but the friendship.