TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

hausrathman Stan and Ollie decide to take their wives and their gout-ridden uncle Edgar on a picnic on a lovely Sunday afternoon. It's a good plan, but they never quite get their in this enjoyable, if slight, short.It was refreshing to see that the new dynamics of making sound films didn't keep the boys completely studio-bound. The vast bulk of this film was shot outdoors and, as a result, doesn't suffer from the same claustrophobia as "Unaccustomed as We Are," "Berth Marks," and the upcoming "They Go Boom." The film also benefits from appearance of the always reliable Edgar Kennedy, a frequent and hilarious foil. Needless to say, his gout-ridden foot will take a great deal of abuse for the film fades out!A nice short, reminiscent of Chaplin's "A Day's Pleasure." Not one of their classics, but well worth a look.

Robert J. Maxwell Laurel, Hardy, and their wives drag Uncle Ed along for a picnic. There is a good deal of fuss and bother getting the food together, getting into the car, starting it, and finally leaving -- but they only travel about a block before the car and everyone in it sinks into an arbitrary fathomless puddle of mud.Some of the gags are very familiar by this time. At the sidewalk, Laurel throws a piece of metal at Hardy, misses, and it goes through a neighbor's window. The neighbor picks it up, slowly walks to the car, and throws it through the windshield. (In the shots that follow, the windshield has magically fixed itself.) Laurel deliberately takes the brick Hardy hands him and throws it through the neighbor's window. The neighbor retaliates in kind. We've seen it before, so we know what's coming and some of the humor is drained from it.What I found most enjoyable was Edgar Kennedy's foot. The unhappy Kennedy has gout and his foot is wrapped in so many bandages it resembles a soccer ball. Now, gout is an extremely painful condition. The joints turn red and swell up. I couldn't count the number of ways that gouty foot is traumatized. In the first instance, Laurel unthinkingly yanks a chair out from under the propped-up foot. The foot falls with a thump to the floor and is savagely attacked by the family dog. After that, the foot is stepped on, sat on, has a door slammed on it, and has the tireless metal rim of a Model T Ford run over it. Pretty inventive stuff.

bob the moo Oliver, Stan and their extended family decide to go for a drive and have a picnic given that it is such perfect weather for it. However a series of events starting with an injured foot, a faulty car and many misunderstandings mean that it is harder to bid their neighbours farewell than they'd hoped.Although slapstick must seem very simply humour (it is, after all, people falling over) it actually must be very difficult to do. In this case it all centres round a picnic trip although the car goes no further than it's parking space for the majority of the film. To come up with a 20 minutes sketch around this is hard work, but yet Laurel & hardy manage to pull it off. The jokes are all quite obvious and none are out of nowhere or very funny, but it all works quite well.The funniest bit to me was the punchline – both Laurel & Hardy keep straight faces and do it like real professionals and make the final shot funnier than it actually is. Both the leads are good but the material requires a lot more setting up which means you can often see the gag about a mile away and it takes away form it a little. The support cast are all pretty ordinary but perform their tasks adequately as really we are watching the lead two. Kennedy's contribution is easily the best as he does battle with a foot bandage and an angry dog.Overall this is an enjoyable short despite the fact that the humour is very staged and doesn't flow as easily as much of their stuff. The punchline is good but some of the material just seems to be lacking that spark. That said, it is still worth a watch.

Snow Leopard This Laurel & Hardy short feature has quite a variety of slapstick material. Most of it is rough physical humor - such as sore feet getting trodden upon and bricks being thrown through windows - but there are plenty of different, funny gags with a couple of subtle ones thrown in. Stan and Ollie are planning on taking their wives and their uncle (Edgar Kennedy) for a nice peaceful picnic, a "Perfect Day". They encounter difficulties even before getting out the door, and once they get into the car, the real chaos starts. Stanley has a very funny bit trying to change a tire, and there is a nicely done subtle joke when, in the midst of a heated 'tit-for-tat' battle with a neighbor, everyone suddenly jumps up and runs inside - what did they see? "Perfect Day" is a good comedy and worth a look.