The Flying Deuces (1939)

Too much of everything

Thanks for the memories!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Avid movie goer that I am, I somehow got to the ripe old age of 39 without being exposed to Laurel and Hardy. My wife and I decided to rectify that by getting one of their collections through Netflix, and a disc with this film and the last one the duo did together, "Utopia," was the first to arrive. Expectations were high for "The Flying Deuces" and I was sure I was going to find the two hilarious.....And then I watched the movie and could barely keep my eyes open. What a woefully unfunny movie "The Flying Deuces" is, and if it's representative of Laurel & Hardy (which I've heard it's not), there's not much chance of me liking their other stuff. I want to see some of their earlier films, especially the silents, as I gather that's where I'll find their strongest collaborations, but even at that I'm not sure I'm ever going to like them as much as I like other comedians from the same era, like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. I just don't care for the personas Laurel and Hardy play, or the mean spiritedness that colors all of Hardy's interactions with Laurel. Hardy doesn't make me root for him, which is essential in these slapstick comedians for their schtick to work. And the brand of humor doesn't appeal to me either. A typical joke in "The Flying Deuces" goes something like this: Laurel bumps his head multiple times on the slanted roof of their Parisian boarding room, Hardy says something like "How can you be stupid enough to keep bumping your head like that?" and then a couple of minutes later Hardy...guess what?...bumps his head on the same ceiling. Hardy har har.I'm willing to give the boys another chance, but my expectations are now set much lower.Grade: D

This was part of a 3-DVD box-set, and it came with the Laurel and Hardy shorts Just Ramblin' Along, Oranges and Lemons, The Tree in a Test Tube and the Three Stooges ones Malice in the Palace and Sing a Song of Six Pants; it also came with another feature, Atoll K(or Utopia). This disc came with Brideless Groom, Mud & Sand and The Tree in a Test Tube. Taking place in France, this has Ollie falling in love, only to discover that she is already married to another man. Being a bit of a romantic, his reaction is to try suicide, but before he can go through with it, he is told that the best way to forget is to join the Foreign Legion. The remainder of this very accurately spoofs said corps, and the military in general. I was impressed by the fact that this actually lets us feel his pain, and sympathize with him. Most of the gags are natural(yes, some of the gags are obvious if you stop to think about them, that's part of slapstick, right?), funny and light(a few are a tad dark), and many are clever. The violence tends to be cartoon-y, with no one being hurt. At its best, this is hilarious, including the great conclusion. This gets big near the end. The version I watched was 68 minutes long, including credits. I recommend this to fans of the duo. 7/10

I don't understand why L&H movie "The Big Noise" is rated so low, and I don't understand why this one is rated so high. It only has three or four funny moments in it and has possibly the dumbest (and worst) endings of any Laurel and Hardy movie. Even Atoll-K has a better ending! The "harp" scene is funny as well as Hardy in the bedroom. The suicide scene and the soft shoe are also amusing, but between those four scenes there's about twenty minutes of material. This would have been better as a twenty five minute shot about them. Of the Hal Roach movies, I would probably rate this one towards the bottom of the list.5 out of 10

In 1939 - 1940 Laurel & Hardy's long contractual relationship with Hal Roach was coming to an end. The boys actually never had a joint contract with Roach - Stan and Babe had signed up in the 1920s at different times. Stan's contract was ending first, but Babe's would be finished within a year.Most people assume that the three men worked very smoothly together. The decline in their work is ascribed to a lack of sympathy shown them by MGM and 20th Century Fox in the 1940s. This is not quite true. Roach, as a producer, was cost conscious, and if he felt something was over-budget he squawked. This led to collisions with Stan. At least once it harmed a film - the feature "Swiss Miss", where a vital element in the scene involving the rope bridge was dropped. Similar cost cutting may have hurt "Bonnie Scotland" (which has an ending that does not even try to settle a plot problem). As early as 1937 Roach began to look into ending the boys partnership. He tried to create a "Hardy" family series (no pun intended) in which Babe was married to Patsy Kelly, and their son was Spanky MacFarlane. A still photo exists of Babe holding Spanky (both trying to out-stare each other) with Patsy looking somewhat bemused. But nothing came of this. In 1939 Roach produced the film "Zenobia", starring Babe as a small-town physician in the anti-bellum South. A request to help a circus elephant causes him trouble. The owner of the elephant is Harry Langdon, and there were rumors at the time that Roach was toying with a new teaming of Hardy and Langdon.Under the circumstances of Roach's antics, it is just possible that the decision of Stan and Babe to make "The Flying Deuces" with Boris Morros as producer was a counter-move: a type of testing the waters to see if the boys needed Roach to be there in order to make successful comedy features. If so, they were smart to do it. "The Flying Deuces" is not one of their greatest comedies (like "Sons Of The Desert") but it is a very amusing one.Although a story and screenplay is listed as the source of the film, one imagines the real source goes back to a short subject movie made a few years earlier called "Beau Hunks". In that short Babe is broken hearted because the woman he loves has married another man. The woman in question is actress Jean Harlow. Babe insists that he must join the Foreign Legend in order to forget his false love. But he insists Stan go with him. Stan can't quite grasp this - why should he join, as he has no reason to forget anyone. Babe immediately says that it is selfish of Stan not to join his friend in trying to forget. So they leave for North Africa. The rest of the short deals with their hard life as legionnaires (under Commandant Charles Middleton) and the fact that the horrified Hardy keeps finding that every man in the Foreign Legion is there trying to forget Jean Harlow (as is the leader of the Riffs!).As you can see there are elements in "Beau Hunks" that are picked up in "The Flying Deuces". Here, while in Paris, Hardy falls for Jean Parker, but she has a boyfriend. Hardy resolves on suicide in the Seine, and ties a heavy weight to himself AND Stan (who should share his fate, as a good friend). But they are prevented by French Legionaire officer Reginald Gardiner, who convinces them to join the Legion in order to forget the sad affair. They agree (Stan is told to get rid of that thing, promptly unties himself from the weight, and throws it into the Seine, causing Ollie to be pulled in). They show up in North Africa, at a fort run by Charles Middleton, and discover that Gardiner is an officer there too - as is his new wife, Jean Parker!The difference in the two films is that the feature enables more material to be put in. When they are going to their quarters, Stan and Ollie break into a soft shoe and song of "Shine On Harvest Moon" (no doubt influenced by similar moments where they did singing and dancing in "Way Out West" the year before. They get into trouble when they are outraged with the small pay they have unwittingly agreed to by signing up. Their behavior keeps escalating until they end up in the guardhouse, awaiting court martial and probable execution, with Jimmy Finleyson as their jailer. And then they make a final break for freedom at the controls of an airplane. The plane crashes, and (for the only time in their films) one of them dies...temporarily. Earlier they had a discussion on reincarnation, and now they see the wisdom of that theory.It is an extremely amusing film for all the players (Middleton having a royal fit when he reads an insulting message left by Hardy on his desk; Gardiner going ballistic finding the boys in Parker's boudoir with her, and Finleyson unable to understand how the boys as well as nearly twenty soldiers raced into the cell they were locked into - so that he couldn't find them - and then they all reappeared). While not as polished as their best work, it certainly was in the top of their second tier of good feature films (better, anyway, than "Bonnie Scotland").It may have worked for awhile. After "Zenobia" and "The Flying Deuces", Roach did not seem to bring up re-teaming Babe with anyone. The boys made "A Chump At Oxford" and "Saps At Sea" with Roach. Then both contracts were over. Unfortunately, they then signed with MGM and 20th Century Fox, and the long decline began in earnest.