Laurel and Hardy in “Great Guns”

Originally posted October 10, 2014.

Today is the anniversary of the released date of the Laurel and Hardy comedy Great Guns (1941). 

This is the team’s first comedy for 20th Century Fox following 13 years working for the man who put them together Hal Roach, and the arrangement already stinks. Though directed by fellow silent comedy vet Monty Banks, the script is an obvious knock-off of Abbott and Costello’s Buck Privates which had been a smash hit several months earlier. Laurel and Hardy play the chauffeur and butler to a hypochondriac rich boy. They join the army when he gets drafted, so that they all can look after each other (what are the odds they’d all draw the same assignment?)

In this, as in all the post-Roach films, the team are no longer the stars of their own film, nor does the film look like a vehicle that has been specifically created for them. They are just shoe horned in. If you care very deeply about a love triangle between a hypochondriac rich boy, a photo lab developing girl, and a drill sergeant then this is the movie for you. Laurel and Hardy are essentially fifth wheels in their own movie. As a consolation prize perhaps, Laurel has a pet crow, but that’s not precisely “funny”, is it? It’s more like something a five year old would find charming and magical.  There are a couple of gags that are okay but it’s pretty uninspired stuff…the usual basic training gags etc. 

Should we write off Great Guns as a misfire? Nah, that would be sinking to the level of the jokes in this movie.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy, don’t missChain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube