Reilly (Ollie) did a fabulous job playing the boys and I really felt that they took their roles incredibly seriously and crafted their performances with such meticulous care and dedication, that I couldn’t have asked for more. I want only to focus here on my personal thoughts and reaction to the film as a fan.įirst off the bat, the film is beautiful to watch and seemed to me to have been made lovingly, with a lot of thought and care for the characters and their legacy. Nor am I going to list the film’s factual inaccuracies, as they have already been covered thoroughly by others online, in particular, author Randy Skretvedt gave a very good and detailed rundown of the mistakes and/or fictional elements of the movie.
But, I’m glad they took the risk, as I’ve been waiting for a big budget, high profile movie to pay homage to the boys since Richard Attenborough’s film ‘Chaplin’ was released back in 1992 – and finally, it’s here.Īs per usual, I’m not going to give a scene by scene description of the movie. Indeed, Steve Coogan (who plays Stan Laurel) has acknowledged in recent interviews that they knew it was risky. So, with all that in mind, I have to think that making this movie at all was actually quite a brave thing to do, given the potential for a backlash from fans.
I guess it illustrates that fans’ feelings about Laurel & Hardy run strong and deep. I’ve always found the Laurel & Hardy fan community to be a thoroughly pleasant, good-humoured and supportive environment and whilst the majority of the discussion, leading up to and following the movie’s release, has been well-natured, I’ve been quite surprised to witness some angry outbursts. There’ll be other cinema-goers whose response to the film is much less dramatic, I’m sure, but I know from reading the social media fan pages, there are thousands of people out there who feel as strongly as I do. Of course, I’m speaking from personal experience here, being a HUGE fan of Laurel & Hardy for as long as I can remember. And then last but by no means least, there are our feelings – the feelings of the audience, or especially and more specifically, the lifelong, die-hard Laurel & Hardy fans…and it’s surprising just how strong and how deep those feelings do run. Further still, it’s about the feelings of the boys’ wives towards their respective husbands and towards each other. But more than that, it’s also about their own inner feelings about themselves and about the stage of life and career that they’ve reached. The film focuses primarily on the feelings between Stan and Babe and their relationship with each other in the twilight years of their comedy partnership. After returning home from watching ‘Stan & Ollie’ at the cinema, it took me a good few hours to get my feelings in order enough to be able to write this blog and, in a way, that’s quite appropriate, as that’s what the film is all about for me…feelings.