Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

County Hospital (1932) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Hardy in the hospital with a broken leg so Laurel comes to pay a visit and gets him kicked out. I think this was my first L&H film and it remains one of my favorites. The stunt with the window and Hardy being thrown in the air is the highlight as is the final gag with the wrecked car.Chump at Oxford, A (1940) *** (out of 4) After stopping a bank robber Laurel and Hardy get the reward of an education at Oxford. This was the European version, which added a 20-minute prologue, which was a remake of From Soup to Nuts but it really doesn't work. The original is a lot better and contains a lot more laughs. The rest of the actual film here is very funny especially the maze sequence, which had tears coming from my eyes.Them Thar Hills (1934)** 1/2 (out of 4) Laurel and Hardy head out into the mountains for some fresh air and come across a well that bootleggers have filled with moonshine. There were some very funny moments here and there but overall this here really isn't anything too special.

When the Lumiere brothers first started exhibiting motion pictures in the 1890's, one of their first subjects was train coming into a train station. Their audience dashed for the exits, feeling the train would run them over. This seems silly to us now but it gives an indication of the adjustments to our thinking that are necessary to enjoy a film.At the end of "County Hospital" there is a singularly ineffective sequence involving a wild car ride through crowded city streets: Laurel is driving but is falling asleep due to a misplaced hypodremic needle. Oliver is in the back seat and can do nothing but hope for the best. The entire scene is back-projected, save for one shot of the car skidding and twisting around on an oil slick on what appears to be a suburban street with no traffic: then we go back to the crowded city street being projected behind the boys. It's not wild at all because it's totally unreal, like a carnival ride. In the old silent days, (before there were unions and ordinances against filing dangerous stunts on the streets), this would have been done much better.Today it looks ridiculous and has no comic impact at all, except for the amusing ending where the car had been punched into an L-shape that can only go around in circles. But was it seen differently then? Did 1932 audiences look at this and accept it at face value and thus find it funnier than it looks today? These days, almost no back projection is used because we've trained our eyes to recognize it. (The sequence with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" doesn't work as well now as it must have in 1955 for this reason).Frankly, I like L&H's verbal humor more than their physical humor. They were among the first comics to create humor through their personalities rather than the crude slapstick that had dominated the silent cinema and this was accommodated, rather than inhibited, by sound.

For some reason or another this short film classic remains my favourite. The plot is very simple and short: Stan visits hospital to see injured Ollie and after a brief catastrophe the Doctor orders both of them to get away from causing any more harm. I have seen this film many times and I have wondered why Ollie's foot is injured – no doubt Stan has something to do with that. It also occurs, like in many other Laurel & Hardy films, that if you have a trouble it will surely get worse. In this matter the trouble is Ollie's leg.This film is not necessarily the best from Laurel & Hardy films, but it summarizes so well what Laurel & Hardy humour is about.

This is in my opinion one fine short that is generally underrated by the critics (perhaps caused by its clumsy back projection scene at the end of the picture). There are some very well staged gags - and probably one the best pantomime scenes of Stan Laurel: He merely sits down to eat an egg at Ollies bed; the audience roars with laughter, although nothing really funny happens; he just sits there eating. But HOW he does it - it's pure Art of comical pantomime!