Block-Heads (1938)

Overrated and overhyped

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

A Hal Roach Production. Copyright 17 August 1938 by Loew's Inc. A Hal Roach Feature Comedy released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. New York opening at the Rialto: 29 August 1938. U.S. release: 19 August 1938. Australian release: 1 June 1939. 6 reels. 57 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Mislaid for twenty years after the Great War, Stan is finally re-united with Ollie, but wreaks havoc on the Hardy home. NOTES: It's hard to believe, but Marvin Hatley's incessantly inappropriate music score was nominated for an Academy Award, losing out-and rightly so!-to Korngold's The Adventures of Robin Hood. Stan bitterly disapproved of the film's ending. He wanted a two-shot of himself and Babe, mounted as trophies over Billy's fireplace. Ollie turns to his partner and declaims with all his customary exasperation: "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"COMMENT: Any film with Patricia Ellis is infinitely worth looking at, even when she's stooging for that delightful threesome, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Billy Gilbert. In fact, it's nice to find the boys with two leading ladies worthy of their talents. Misses Ellis and Gombell are both expert comediennes. Block-Heads provides all five principal players with many opportunities to shine and is one of the funniest of the L&H features. After a splendid introduction (using spectacular stock footage from The Big Parade), Laurel and Hardy each have a winning solo scene before destructively joining forces in some cleverly engineered, hilarious mayhem. We love Stan jumping into Babe's arms to be carried, Billy cleverly inverting Frank Buck's celebrated boast to the reporters ("I don't bring them back alive. I bring them back dead. I bring myself back alive!"), Babe huffing and puffing endlessly down the stairs (with Stan's magic window shade), and the king-pin domestic squabble that rages as Stan sits up and down in the "chair". Block-Heads rates as a very amusing entry indeed. Proficiently directed and produced, it thoroughly deserves its high popularity with L&H fans.

"Blockheads" was a huge return to form for Stan and Ollie after the film "The Bohemian Girl" was met with a bit of disappointment. The above film was a case of going back to basics and the boys were back on top where they belonged! Stan and Ollie are soldiers in the First World War and Stan volunteers to stand guard alone. However, he still there on guard about 20 years later! He is declared a war hero and Ollie invites Stan home for a meal with Mrs. Hardy. Unfortunately, this doesn't go according to plan....... Silent film comedian Harry Langdon wrote some of the gags and he deserves credit in helping to make "Blockheads" one of the funniest films from Laurel and Hardy. Billy Gilbert makes a welcome return appearance as a big game hunter and James Finlayson appears as someone who provokes Ollie into an argument. The flights of stairs that were used for this film are put to very good comic use. I loved every minute of this film.

What a great movie. Oliver plays the henpecked husband (the wives are always gun toting, nasty women) who goes to buy his wife an anniversary present. In the newspaper he sees a story of a U.S. Soldier who stayed at his post for twenty years after Armistice. No one told him the war was over. Ollie recognizes him immediately and goes to see him at the soldiers home. He decides to bring him home and his wife goes ballistic, leaving the two of them to destroy the place. There are some of the funniest scenes ever in this movie which also features Billy Gilbert as a jealous husband big game hunter who has a pretty wife. As the world comes crashing down around them for about the fiftieth time, things couldn't get worse--or could they? Excellent plot and wonderful execution by these gems of the cinema.

The first half of BLOCK-HEADS contains the most amusing skits in the feature that runs just a little short of one hour and seems like a series of farcical sketches that become a little too hectic toward the last twenty minutes. But fans of LAUREL & HARDY probably won't really mind since it's good slapstick fun.The most amusing idea has STAN LAUREL still keeping watch in the trenches during World War I and shooting at a German plane until the pilot (who lands safely nearby) explains to him that the war has been over since 1918. When Stan is reunited with his friend OLIVER HARDY at a veteran's home, he's sitting in an unoccupied wheelchair and Oliver thinks he's a vet with a missing leg. It's one of the funniest sections of the film, that has Oliver carrying him, getting dumped on by a dumpster, and taking all sorts of pratfalls as the routine winds on.Later, at Hardy's home, the slapstick gets even wilder but not necessarily funnier. Too many staged arguments with his wife (MINNA GOMBELL) lead to the sort of shouting matches that can become tiresome after awhile. But through it all, STAN LAUREL has some good comic moments as friend Oliver gets in trouble with the lady next door and her jealous husband (BILLY GILBERT).The gags are fast and furious in typical slapstick tradition and it's a fast-moving comedy that should satisfy fans of the duo. Gilbert is a joy to watch as the jealous hubby, easily stealing scenes with his caricature of the man across the hall from Hardy.Summing up: Delightful mixture of gags and slapstick situations in the Hal Roach tradition.