Directed by James Parrott
Starring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Harry Bernard
Produced by Hal Roach Studios
Stan and Ollie are once again in trouble with the law and take to hiding out in a vacant mansion. Trouble ensues when a wealthy couple arrives to lease the house and our heroes must pose as the owner, his butler...and the maid.
Can the duo convince the potential renters they are the owners? And what will happen when the actual owner returns from vacation?
Remember that feeling you got when you watched the latest attempt by Saturday Night Live to take one of their recurring one-joke characters and stretch that into a feature film?
Granted, it's only 30 minutes long, but over that half of an hour, the comedy basically has two jokes: smug superiority over the rich, and Stan's exasperated impersonation of a woman.
I'm sure at the time of the Great Depression the former gags were funny and culturally relevant. However, today it's hard to see the humor. The wealthy are just too much of a caricature. The portrayal is over-the-top. Now that could work if any of the gags went as far, but it's basically Hardy's not-as-clever-as-he-thinks observations about the social elite that are meant to carry the story. It all comes across as out of balance. We are waiting for a payoff, for anything to happen, and it never does.
More successful are Laurel's gender-bending transformations between butler and maid. The look of exasperation on his face is certainly smile-inducing, but the only true moment of humor comes in his one-on-one interactions with the wife of the potential renter. Laurel carries the joke exactly as far as it needs to go and you watch the scene unsure of how much his straight woman is laughing out of character.
On the whole, Another Fine Mess ranks as a misfire. I kept waiting for some escalation, but it plays the same notes right up until the last moments.
** out of *****
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