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Hall was only slightly behind James Finlayson as their most notable and valuable comic foil it is often inexplicable that he could be so prominent in shorts like this, Laughing Gravy, et al, then often appearing in roles where he could be barely glimpsed as a wordless extra, and he never really had a major supporting role in any of their features at the Roach studios, where too often the parts went to unfamiliar and often boring straight actors reciting dull, humourless dialogue.
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The premise of the boys' newly opened electrical store being next to that of their arch enemy from the previous film Charlie Hall's grocery store is rather obviously contrived, but this is almost as funny as the previous all-out battle between the three, extracting plenty of gags from the products available in both stores. So this additional reel isn't actually that bad, but provides little in the way of laughs, unlike the two reel version which is better and provides far more merriment.Ī sequel to the previous year's Them Thar Hills, Tit For Tat had a few problems regarding its original script according to esteemed L & H author Randy Skretvedt, as he indicated this was almost totally thrown away with the team working virtually off-the-cuff and improvising the story as they went along. Despite being of considerable historical interest, the scene is far too static, talkative and atypical of what went in the two reels before, and indeed is rather alien to what would be expected in a L & H short comedy, only interesting as a further examination of their unique relationship, with deeper and more serious characterisation. Laughing Gravy was originally intended as a three-reeler, and the concluding final scene was removed and thought lost until it was rediscovered in the mid 1980's.The extra added footage became widely available on VHS then DVD alongside the two-reel version the latter is still much superior, with a infamously dark-humoured finale, which is eschewed in the longer version, in a rather overly contrived sub-plot of Stan inheriting a fortune and refusing to share it with Ollie. This provides plenty of opportunities for humour, and Laughing Gravy does not disappoint, with ample slapstick and charm laid on thick, with the title music accompanying the "Ku-Ku" song ("Candy,Candy"), and an apparently specially composed piece in the background music called "Dog Song" punctuating the action perfectly. The original provided plenty of laughs on a slightly improbable premise the remake has the more credible story of a pet dog and is therefore rather better, with Laughing Gravy himself as much a star as the boys himself and doing a pretty good job of it, with Hall at his most sneering, cruel and cynical who refuses to allow any pets in his rooms and evict his tenants on the slightest infraction. It contains many quintessential elements of any Laurel and Hardy comedy the boys on their uppers in a seedy boarding house, menaced by the most familiar of mean landlords in the shape of Charlie Hall, all set during a particularly bleak and snowy Winter's night. An almost but not quite scene for scene remake of their last silent comedy Angora Love (1929), and reworked into the last few minutes of The Chimp a year later, this two-reeler is one of the few occasions where the team were upstaged by another scene-stealing member of the cast, namely the cute and endearing little dog of which the film takes its title.