After last month’s Holmes & Watson, I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of another Blank & Blank buddy picture also featuring John C. Reilly as the other Blank of the title. Holmes & Watson was so bad that it made me question the integrity of a movie co-starring John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan.
The good news is that I loved Stan & Ollie, an old fashioned buddy movie and redemption story. John C. Reilly plays Oliver Hardy and Steve Coogan plays Stan Laurel. The movie’s timeline goes back and forth a bit between the past and the present, but it mostly focuses on their career after superstardom, where they tour England on a series of live shows. We flash forward and flash back to find out how they got to that point.
There was a time when Laurel and Hardy were it. They were the comic duo of their day and they were beloved by millions of adoring fans. After a split from the studio they were both contracted under, they each went their own way, Laurel secretly bitter that his friend Ollie would do an elephant picture without him, while he never worked with anyone else outside of their duo. Hardy, on the other hand, resents that his friend Stan only ever loved “Laurel and Hardy” but not Oliver, the man, himself.
Both older men at this point of their “comeback”, they reuse their old gags, at first to the disappointment of the tour manager, but after a while, they find their spark again, that old familiar magic, and begin to gain traction. Their personal lives are, at turns, dramatic, uneven and filled with both comfort and love, but also uneasiness in what the future holds for them. Ollie is dealing with health problems and Stan is working his fingers to the bone on a script for a movie that may never get made.
The two leads really do become the men they’re playing. Steve Coogan’s Stan Laurel is possibly his best performance, deftly balancing sadness with grace; John C. Reilly’s Oliver Hardy is as good as he’s ever been, and he reminds everyone that he’s one of the greatest living actors today. The movie itself is a balancing act of tones, in risk of veering to far one way or the other, but pulls it off expertly. There’s a scene early on where Oliver and Hardy are checking into a motel and decide to put on a little show for the desk clerk. Hardy comes into the lobby with a small suitcase and Laurel struggles through the entrance, apparently carrying the rest of the luggage, banging them against the door, the wall, falling over and then bolts back up, winded and sweaty. It’s classic slapstick in the tradition of the duo and the audience I saw the movie with was laughing uproariously.
Comedy routines in the vain of vaudeville seem to age pretty well because it’s a sort of universal funniness that transcends eras. Even a show like I Love Lucy, which began on the stage and on radio before moving to television, has a similar longevity in its humor. It doesn’t rely on knowing specific pop culture references or a current political climate. No matter who you are or where you from, you can understand the basic appeal of two people looking for each other on a train platform and narrowly missing each other, each believing the other person is late.
Stan & Ollie is an unpretentious, uncynical film with a pretty basic lesson about the importance of friendship. And when I say “basic” I don’t mean that the lesson isn’t deep. It’s just a simple statement, delivered beautifully and powerfully. It isn’t the kind of movie to bog itself down with heavy themes or the entire span of a lifetime or a career. It focuses on a small period of time in their lives, where they have a second chance and make a go of it, and are able to find not only redemption in their friendship, but with themselves.
Nina Arianda almost steals the show as Ida Kitaeva Laurel, Stan’s wife. She dislikes the tour manager and makes her feelings no secret. Almost every angry line she delivers to him is funny. She cares about her husband and his health, but has no nonsense about keeping his unhealthy habits, like drinking with his diabetes, in check. She mentions how whenever they go out drinking, it works for her because now she gets to drink twice as much for the both of them.
Stan & Ollie is a refreshing movie that’s perfect for everyone of all ages. It’s rated PG, features no foul language to speak of, and has some mild drinking and smoking for an appropriate historical context. Sometimes it’s nice to watch an uncomplicated movie with uncomplicated motives and an innocence to it. Stan & Ollie is about a lot of things, but most of all, it’s about two guys who inspired each other to do their best work, and through it, from ups to down and better to worse, loved each other very much.