Nothing But Trouble (1944)

This was the second Laurel and Hardy film on the disc with Air Raid Wardens.  Like that film, Nothing But Trouble is set in a different era when times were hard.  There are jokes about ration stamps and hoarding and the rarity of meat that today’s kids won’t understand at all.  I only understand them because my mom told me about those days.

There is one big difference between Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble that I noticed.  Nothing But Trouble is funnier.  This is still a much tamer Stan and Ollie compared to the memories I have of them from my youth.  I remember Ollie being much more domineering and quick to anger with Stanley.  I recall Stanley crying quite a bit as well.  In this film they are the best of buds and there is little dissention between them.  The plot concerns a boy king that sneaks away and spends the day with our duo while they prepare a dinner for a society climbing lady and her husband who are hosting a party that night for the self-same king.

The plot is like half of the Prince and the Pauper without the use of a twin look a like.  Of course plenty of time is also given to Laurel and Hardy’s antics as the chef and butler to this woman.  They do a lousy job, but their hearts are in the right place, so when she berates them and fires them, even though she is justified, we still feel bad for the boys.

A secondary plot concerns plans by the king’s uncle to have him killed and the death blamed on their political rivals.  This leads to a couple of funny scenes with a poisoned salad.

The disc doesn’t feature any special features other than the trailer for the film, but it is another one of those trailers that manages to show us the last scene in the movie as well as several other late in the picture bits.  If the plot were explained in the trailer it would likely give away the whole film.  It’s a 9 on the Quarantine scale.  As for the movie itself, I give it 2 1/4 stars.  It was interesting, but more as a nostalgic curiosity.  I’m still waiting to catch one of the Laurel and Hardy comedies that I saw as a kid.

Air Raid Wardens

I know as a kid I saw some Laurel & Hardy films as well as some Abbott & Costello and Lewis & Martin.  I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the titles of any of them, but I know I thought they were funny.  A recent trip to Big Lots turned up a couple of Laurel & Hardy double features.  I decided to pop this one in and check it out.  I can now safely say that Air Raid Wardens was not one of the films I watched as a child because there was very little humor in this movie.  Air Raid Wardens isn’t funny enough to be a comedy and it’s not really heavy enough on plot to be a drama either.  What Air Raid Wardens is, however, is a perfect piece of Hollywood produced, homefront WWII propaganda.

Air Raid Wardens opens with Laurel & Hardy in debt and joining the army to escape their creditors as well as doing their patriotic duty to help “lick the Japs”.  There’s only one minor problem, not one branch of the service was willing to take them.  They return home and sign up to be Air Raid Wardens.  Their bumbling gets them kicked out of that position as well.  As they sit bemoaning their inability to help their country, they overhear plans being made by a group of German spies.  They pull together to notify the authorities and stop the Nazi’s plot.

I expected a lot of slapstick when I sat down with this film, but there was very little.  An early scene has the duo posting bills announcing the meeting of the Air Raid Wardens, but the gags are kept to a minimum.  Ollie gets paste brushed on his face several times and Stanley pastes his bill upside down causing Ollie to have to fix it and accidentally stepping in the paste bucket during the attempt.  One lady gets paste lobbed on her new dress as Ollie attempts to repay Stanley.  That’s about the height of the mayhem they create.  No windows are broken.  No paste buckets get dumped on a fancy dressed bystander.  It’s almost like the actors, writers and director just didn’t have their hearts into making a comedy.  Most every slapstick set up gets passed by before it can truly escalate.

Air Raid Wardens is interesting to watch only as a reminder of the homefront propaganda that Hollywood was producing to keep the country firmly behind our fighting forces.  Viewed as such it is an oddity that might rate an 8 on the Night Flight scale, but taken as an actual comedy film, I give it a dismal 1 1/2 stars.