Prismark10 Laurel and Hardy worked best in their shorts. The feature length films they made were too padded out such as with Swiss Miss which had songs that go on and on.Laurel and Hardy have travelled from the USA to Switzerland to sell mouse traps unsuccessfully, after being ripped off by some locals with fake currency they end up working in a hotel as dishwashers. For every dish they break, they have to work extra days. Unfortunately they keep breaking dishes.They encounter a singer who is in disguise as she wants to work at her husband's latest musical which he is writing in the Swiss Alps. Laurel tells Hardy that the lady fancies him!The film works best when it concentrates on the duo such as Stanley trying to coax brandy from a St Bernard or when the two try to move a piano through a drawbridge but get chased by a gorilla.Unfortunately the film does not feature Laurel and Hardy enough and has too many interminable song and dance numbers.

theowinthrop It's not a total washout among their feature films. It has some very fine moments - among my favorite Ollie serenading Grete Natzler with, "Let me call you Sweetheart" which Stan is playing on a tuba! There is also Stan and the St. Bernard he fools into giving him a bit of his medicinal brandy. There is also the gorilla and the boys and the piano on the swaying bridge. But the film is a wash-out when compared with SONS OF THE DESERT, WAY OUR WEST, or BLOCK-HEADS.It should have been better - it was their last attempt at an operetta format. In fact the plot deals with a composer (Walter Woolf King - "Lasparri" in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA) struggling to compose the score of his next operetta for him and his wife (Ms Natzler). Set in Switzerland, like THE BOHEMIAN GIRL the boys get into fun costumes. They are in the alps because they are mouse trap salesmen in Switzerland (because of it's cheese). They are swindled and owe a huge hotel tab. Ollie has insulted the hotel cook (Adia Kuznetzoff) who is determined to make them pay by forcing them to slave for him as busboy waiters until their bill is paid off. When they try to cheat he forces them to break more plates to replace the figures they wiped out.All this is more than promising, but structurally it is not good. This seems to be the fault of the studio owner, Hal Roach.Roach was aware that Laurel and Hardy were his biggest star attractions, and he knew that the revenue they generated might give him the chance to expand his production company. Roach did get somewhere in the late 1930s with bigger films. He produced the "Topper" films (the first with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, as well as Roland Young), and also ONE MILLION B.C. with Carole Landis. But Roach's conservative instincts interfered with his plans here. For one thing he could not bring himself to treat Stan and Ollie as a unified bargaining unit. He had their contracts end at different dates, in an irritating attempt to keep them in check. Stan in particular had to be kept under control. So in the late 1930s Roach suggested a "Hardy Family" series with Ollie and Patsy Kelly as husband and wife, and Spanky MacFarlane as their son. It sounds interesting, but it got nowhere (one wonders if it was planned to go anywhere). He also made the feature ZENOBIA in 1939 with Laurel replaced by Harry Langdon (Langdon was working for Roach as a gag writer at the time). The boys retaliated by doing THE FLYING DEUCES with producer Boris Morros - a hint to Roach that he was equally replaceable. It was a message that Roach quickly noted, but probably resented.Secondly there was the issue of being penny wise and pound foolish. Roach kept close watch on film budgets. When Stan and Ollie made the film OUR RELATIONS, Stan was active producer on that film, and he spent money quite freely on it, especially in the sequences set in a nightclub. Compare the really realistic nightclub there with the more spartan ones shown in some of the shorts Roach controlled like BLOTTO. Roach did not care for this at all. So he looked at the script of SWISS MISS and tampered with it.In the original script, apparently, Natzler is having a marital dispute with King which involves their rival egos and his refusal to let her help him with his operetta work. She is ordered to leave. She disguises herself and becomes a maid at the hotel that Stan and Ollie are stuck working their bill off at. Ollie falls for the new maid. But so does the boys' adversary Kuznetzoff, who is furious watching Ollie trying to ingratiate himself with her. He also notes that King is trying to ingratiate himself with the maid (King recognizes Natzler, but is pretending he is in love with the "maid" to make Natzler furious and jealous). So Kuznetzoff tries to get rid of all three of them by putting a bomb in the piano that they have to carry across a swaying rope bridge to King's chalet. This part of the famous sequence was cut out by Roach, trying to cut costs and time. There is a still photo showing Stan arguing about the cut sequence, and it shows him as really angry. He was right to be angry - the sequence is still very funny with that gorilla, but it had moments of Stan and Ollie crashing into the keyboard that were meant to make the audience expect a premature explosion.For a musical it lacks any memorable tunes - unlike WAY OUT WEST with "In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" and "We're Going to Dixie", or with THE SONS OF THE DESERT with "Honalulu Baby" or THE BOHEMIAN GIRL with "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" (or even unlike the later THE BIG NOISE with "Maizy Doats"!). Instead, King cooks up a little ditty called "The Cricket Song" which has the opening line, "Crick, crick, crick goes the cricket...singing merrily, all day long!" Like the ridiculous conclusion of the Don Ameche biopic on Stephen Foster, wherein everyone hearing the music - supposedly - of "Old Folks At Home" for the first time sing it standing as the film ends, here the entire village is singing this ditty. At least Foster's tune was a great one. I assure you "The Cricket Song" is not!!Little else positive to add except for those few good bits I mentioned - and the brief appearances of the always welcomed Eric Blore (as King's butler). It barely rises above the bulk of the films of the 1940s for MGM and 20TH Century Fox, but enjoy it's best moments without any second thoughts.

SnorrSm1989 Laurel and Hardy-fans are easily spoiled. Having made such masterpieces of mirthmaking like HELPMATES and WAY OUT WEST, it is easy to dismiss SWISS MISS as a rather minor work. Perhaps that is the case; but only, I think, when seen in relation to the very best of the Boys' output in the 1930s. Boss Hal Roach tended to have a different view on public taste than Stan Laurel; arguing that audiences preferred not to be fed with gags and slapstick for an entire hour on end, Roach reportedly ordered several of his comedies to include so-called subplots, romances involving other characters than the feature's main comedians. This was clearly a decision inspired by the output of comedians from larger studios; the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields were also cast in such films, much to their frustration. Whether or not Roach's view was accurate for its time, these subplot-comedies have generally aged much less vigorously than features in which our favorite comedians are allowed to do their act throughout all the reels. In SWISS MISS, the subplot involves a handsome opera singer named Victor Albert (Walter Woolf King), whose desire to work in his hotel suite is constantly put to task by his annoying wife Anna (Grete Natzler). As Mr. Albert's profession suggests, we are treated with several musical numbers. While this subplot is not necessarily less interesting than other subplots from comedies of the same era, that really isn't saying much; one longs for Laurel and Hardy to turn up while they are absent. Stan Laurel is reported to have complained about the singing acts himself during production. The combination of comedy and operetta is less effective here than in, say, the earlier film THE DEVIL'S BROTHER.However, while one may find the subplot rather unnecessary or even annoying at times, Laurel and Hardy themselves are no less delightful here than usual, when given screen time. Here, they try their luck (or defy their obvious lack of luck) in Switzerland selling rat traps; a simple plot with plenty of potential for comic invention, which is utilized in several hilarious sequences. There is the rather famous scene having the Boys doing a noble attempt to deliver a piano over a suspension bridge when a gorilla turns up; the projection-work may not be very convincing, even by 1938-standards, but this is hardly of much significance, as it is the performances of Stan and Ollie which grab our attention. Also particularly memorable is the part with Stan coaxing brandy from a St. Bernard; the similarity between Laurel and former silent comedy great Harry Langdon has hardly ever been more evident than here, especially as this scene is nearly a solo performance from Stan, omitting the presence of the dog. The bit with the "snow" had me howling with laughter. All in all, SWISS MISS is certainly worth the time of any Laurel and Hardy-fan, spoiled though we may be; but newcomers should check out certain other titles first.

Boba_Fett1138 This is by no means the best full length Laurel & Hardy picture but there is still plenty to enjoy here. Many people have issues with this movie but there basically is very little wrong with the movie itself. Therefor this movie is perhaps a bit too under-appreciated by most.It's not the funniest Laurel & Hardy movie but at least its story is enjoyable enough and has plenty of entertainment value in it. Of course Laurel & Hardy were already over their top in 1938 but there were some moments in this movie which reminded me of their glory days, from back in the late '20's till the mid-'30's. I'm talking about the moments when the boys are drilling holes in the floor, when they have to do the dishes and when they have to push a piano across a canyon. The movie is filled with moments which reminded me of their best years, that were unfortunately already behind them when they made this movie. The movie has some memorable moments in it and the movie is consistent enough to consider this movie a watchable as well as a very enjoyable one, that unfortunately can not conceal that the two boys already had their best years behind them though.I never really understood why long Laurel & Hardy movies always also had a serious subplot-line it, which always involved serious characters played by actors why play their roles in a non-comical way. The entire love story of the movie with the more serious characters certainly does no good to the movie its entertainment value or pace. Surely the movie would had been better if more characters and subplots were erased from the script. I mean when you already have 2 characters such as Laurel and Hardy, you just don't need no other characters who play a just as prominent role in the movie as the two boys. It only works distracting, since we never really get to care about any of those characters and are only interested in the faith, antics and silly situations the two boys get themselves into.A not entirely successful- but still a very enjoyable late Laurel & Hardy picture that deserves some more credit.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/