JohnHowardReid
Stan Laurel is the number one star in this Laurel and Hardy entry from producer, Hal Roach. Not only is Laurel the instigator of the plot, and not only does he have a champion share of the funny business in the hilariously daffy three-handed jape with the "ghost", but for the first of only two occasions in his entire sound career, he essays a character role. And he plays this one most effectively too! (The other occasion was his Don Sebastion in 1945's The Bullfighters). Lord Paddington is no mere impersonation, but a complete reversal of Laurel's customary character. Speaking in a splendidly snooty, upper-crust accent, Paddington puts the maladroit Hardy through some marvelous paces. Even his dialogue is urbanely droll and keenly condescending. He argues, for example, that Hardy's ineptitudes "break the monotony" and that Babe "helps fill up the room, you know." There was never a funnier or more perfectly attuned team than Laurel and Hardy. Even when the situation is more piquant than usual, both can rise to the occasion. For personality, charisma and sheer vitality, they leave all the other twosomes far behind. I can never forget Paddington instructing Fatty in the proper deportment of a valet: "Lift up that chin! Both of them!"; and Babe's final, wildly exasperated response: "And another thing: I didn't like that double chin crack either!" Now that's acting!
Vincentb341
In 1940, Laurel and Hardy made their last two movies for Hal Roach, A Chump At Oxford and Saps At Sea. Oxford is the better film, but both are entertaining. In any case, this was the last time the pair had any creative input regarding their own films. (At MGM and Fox, they were handed a script and told to do it "the studio way.") A Chump At Oxford is really two movies in one. The opening shot shows Stan and Ollie hitchhiking to an employment agency. The only job that's open requires a maid and butler team, so for the second time in his career (the first was in Another Fine Mess), Stan plays Agnes the maid. What follows is a partial re-make of another short, From Soup to Nuts (in fact, as dinner is about to be served, Ollie announces, "We've got everything from soup to nuts.") Stan once again serves the salad undressed, but he is also drunk, having taken Mr. Vanderveer's (Jimmy Finlayson) instruction to "Take all those cocktails" a bit too literally. He chases them out of the house with a shotgun, shooting a policeman in the derriere along the way.In the next scene, Ollie and Stan are sweeping streets. Ollie, usually the eternal optimist, is more depressed here than in any L & H film. "Well, here we are, right back down in the gutter. We're just as good as other people, but we don't advance ourselves. We never get anywhere." They decide to attend night school, but their fortunes change sooner than they expect. Like W.C. Fields in The Bank Dick, they (quite accidentally) capture a couple of bank robbers. As Ollie explains that they have no education, the bank manager rewards them with the finest education money can buy, at Oxford University. Arriving in England, our friends are preyed upon by a dreary crowd of students, among them old nemesis Charley Hall and a very young Peter Cushing. They play childish pranks on the boys, getting them lost for hours in a weird-looking maze, and dressing up like a ghost to scare them to death. Soon after they arrive, Stan makes it very clear that he is out of his element.Johnson (Peter Cushing): Haven't you come to the wrong college? You're dressed for Eton (the famous British prep school).Stan: Why, that's swell, we haven't eaten since breakfast, have we Ollie?The worst prank of all is when Johnson disguises himself as the dean and directs them to the real dean's rooms, telling them that these are their quarters. When the dean (Wilfred Lucas) returns and the students are caught, he tells them they will all be expelled. They vow to take revenge against Stan and Ollie.Shown to their proper quarters, the boys meet their valet Meredith (Forrester Harvey). He refers to Stan as Your Lordship, stating that before a window came down on his head and he wandered away, he was the greatest athlete and scholar in the history of Oxford, and "oh, what a brilliant mind." When Ollie hears this, he bursts into laughter. "Why I've known him for years and he's the dumbest guy I ever met."Meanwhile the expelled students are heading for their lodgings singing a bizarre "chant of revenge." As Stan looks out the window, it crashes down on his head, and he becomes Lord Paddington. As the students enter his room, His Lordship fights them all, throwing them all out the window (in a rather cruel weight joke, he throws Ollie out, too, and he makes a huge crater in the ground when he lands.)A certificate on the wall informs us that Lord Paddington has been reestablished as the leading scholar/athlete at the University. He speaks like a cultured English gentleman, and Ollie is now his valet. (This is not too hard to understand when you consider that Stan was the creative genius of the team, writing many of the gags we see in the films.) Ollie is now a humiliated figure, and no other actor can use camera looks to express humiliation like Oliver Hardy. At one point, the dean comes in to tell Paddington that Professor Einstein has arrived from America and is a bit confused about his theory. Could he straighten him out? Ollie is incredibly shocked, muttering under his breath, "If it wasn't for that bump on the head, he wouldn't know Einstein from a beer stein." But he's helpless to do anything about it.
Shawn Watson
I remember watching this on BBC2 when I was about 8 years old and finding it hysterical. So, much to my pleasure, Universal has released it on DVD (Region 2 only) along with many other Laurel and Hardy movies. I chose to watch the black and white version as that is how I originally saw it.There is an extended opening featuring a remake of 1928's 'From Soup to Nuts' short in which Stan and Ollie cause havoc at a swanky dinner party before being employed as street sweepers. During their sweeping lunch break they inadvertently foil a bank robbery and as a reward they are sent to Oxford for a good education, perhaps finally getting them out of the gutter.Once there, the students (including a young Peter Cushing) play all sorts of pranks on them and Stan loses (or restores) his memory when he is hit on the back of the head. Now he's Lord Paddington (I must add he does brilliantly with the accent) and he gives Ollie some amount of grief for his weight.Very funny indeed, I suggest you check it out whenever it comes on TV.
