As a kid, I loved it.
Into my adult years, I loved it.
Recently, not so much.
Keep in mind that I have seen this movie approximately 100 times, so I'm gonna get nitpicky.
I can tell you what's wrong with the picture in 2 woirds [sic]-- Minna Gombell -- as mentioned above.
I agree that someone like Mae Busch (or, how about, actually getting Mae Busch!) would have been far superior.
She has an annoying voice -- Minna, that is. I mean, really annoying. Not in a funny way, either.
The writers are partly to blame. Perhaps they didn't think it would be funny for Mr. and Mrs. Hardy to have an amusing argument where you could actually hear what they were saying. Instead, we get rambling dialog, sometimes when they are not even on-screen. I have a hypothesis -- perhaps what the writers intended was to emphasize Stan's child-like character. A small child only hears his parents yelling -- he doesn't hear what they are saying. That being said, did they have to repeat a sound loop where all you can make out are the words "animal crackers"? Captain Spaulding, we hardly knew ye!
We are ask to buy a lot about the film's premise:
1. No one, including Ollie, thinks to go back and get Stan after their battle.
2. Ollie, supposedly Stan's best friend, completely forgets about him, leaves France, and goes back home to America.
3. In 20 years, no one discovered Stan before until he shoots down an aviator, who tells him, "Ze war's been over vor dwendy years!"
4. Without thinking, the aviator immediately realizes that Stan is talking about WWI, and his first reaction when Stan says that is to laugh.
5. No other planes have gone by Stan's trench in 20 years.
6. Stan had the wherewithal to keep his artillery in working order for 20 years (this is the Stan character we are talking about!), or the artillery was so well made that it immediately worked, having not been used in 20 years.
7. Ollie didn't get married for another 19 years after the war. (Well, it could happen!)
8. Lulu supposedly hasn't seen Ollie in years, yet she knows exactly where he lives. And he married a "local girl", whatever that's supposed to mean.
I could go into how they haven't aged at all in 20 years, or the fact that 2 guys in their late 40s were fighting in the war, or that they were really in their 20s but looked a lot older, but I won't.
Like I said, I've seen this one 100 times.
It's only 57 minutes, yet a relatively large amount of time is devoted to stock footage at the beginning. Add to that typically lengthy credits since this was a feature, and you are really cutting into the boys' screen time. Yet at the end, the film drags, and seem longer than an hour.
In between, we do get some of the best and funniest L&H ever. Starting with the visit at the Veteran's home, and ending with Mrs. Hardy's second return home. From there, it drags -- yet I may be in the minority in finding the reprisal of the WE FAWN DOWN finale very funny.
I would still highly recommend it to someone who hasn't seen it, but I just don't reach for it to watch like I used to. Maybe in another 10 years I will feel differently.
And yes, I would have loved to have seen Patricia Ellis in lingerie. She was certainly a looker!
BTW, I was fortunate enough to meet Tommy Bond once and I asked him about this film. He said Stan and Babe were very nice fellows.
It was at a movie collector's show, and he was selling the then-new Cabin Fever VHS tapes of Our Gang. He also was autographing his new autobiography, which I bought that day, a well as pictures. One of the pics he had to autograph was a scene from BLOCK-HEADS, which prompted me to ask about it. Just making conversation, I asked him how old he was in the pic. When I got home, I looked up his birthday in the Our Gang book by Maltin -- and Butch got his age wrong by a few years, lol. We talked about Charley Chase, and he mentioned he was in I'LL TAKE VANILLA (which I still haven't seen), and I said, "What about YOU SAID A HATFUL?" which I had in Super 8 from Blackhawk. He was stunned. He didn't know he was in it!
