Stan and Ollie magazine – IGN

By William Bibbiani

This is a preliminary examination. Stan & Ollie opens in a limited version on December 28th.

It's hard to say how well-known and successful comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were at their peak. Together, Laurel and Hardy have starred in more than 100 films, many of which have been praised at the box office. Their caricature characters and their playful schish, with the round Hardy always on receipt of Laurel's unconscious gags as a stick, are suitable for almost any situation. They were comic masters who worked at the peak of their craft.

But all the stars must fall. Jon S. Baird's new biopic, Stan & Ollie, finds the two legends at the end of their careers as amusing as ever, but find it difficult to find an audience now that comedy has evolved and acts like Abbott & Costello dominate the entertainment world. It sounds melancholy, and sometimes, but Baird only has warmth in his heart for these two maestros of comedy. The film is a Hollywood biopic as funny and charming as you can ever find.

Steve Coogan plays Stan Laurel, who in 1953 joined Oliver Hardy, played by John C. Reilly, for a comedy tour in Europe. Along the way, they plan to revive their acting skills after a failure, involving gruesome contract negotiations and an unhappy movie with an elephant. They are also trying to develop a new film called Rob 'Em Good', a parody of Robin Hood that they plan to shoot at the end of their concert series … if they succeed so far.

Along the way, Laurel and Hardy strive to regain their old chemistry, keep their old grudges alive, and face the very real possibility that their careers are simply over, whether they want it or not . The show should always continue, but maybe – maybe just – it should go on without them.

Coogan and Reilly are the absolute perfection of Laurel & Hardy, capturing all their iconic ways without ever resorting to superficial imitation. Laurel & Hardy are accomplished professionals, always ready to entertain, even in causal encounters. They just like to make people laugh, and so they casually reconstruct some of their most famous routines on the way, in the street or in the waiting rooms, just to make the people around them grow.

The stars of Stan and Ollie are John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Steve Coogan and Nina Arianda.

It's an intelligent and entirely organic way to make Laurel & Hardy's biopic a true Laurel & Hardy film. Baird, who works on a nuanced and witty scenario by Jeff Pope, allows the audience to go back and forth behind the curtain. We watch the series, and then we watch the messy emotional reality that has led to these classic routines working. And everything we learn makes us love them more.

Stan & Ollie wisely uses the thin, almost imperceptible difference between the adorable facades of the actors and their real and painful personal quarrels to advance the film. Stan Laurel is the duo's business man, the writer and the director who is always moving comedy forward. Oliver Hardy keeps pace and contributes, but is more concerned about his life, his wife and their relationship. At its lowest point, when Laurel screams desperately, "I loved each other!" To his best friend, Hardy answers, "You loved Laurel & Hardy, but you never loved me."

"So what?" Laurel replies, apparently not seeing any difference. The silence in the room is deafening, and yet no party-goers in the background seem to be able to tell whether the duo is actually fighting or whether it's in the middle of another "bitten" ".

Stan & Ollie is a film about people going astray in their characters, but it's also a loving relationship of an impressive tenderness between these two men, as well as their wives. Shirley Henderson (T2: Trainspotting) plays Lucille Hardy and Nina Arianda (Goliath) plays Ida Laurel, whose personalities are as opposed as their husbands and seem to have developed their own comic dyad. "You are the quintessence of Hollywood," says Lucille to Ida, a former dancer struggling with an ego problem. "Do not complain!" Ida shouted laughing as much as Coogan or Reilly never did. Henderson and Arianda are thieves of scenes in a movie about other characters who have become famous for stealing scenes. (And if justice reigns in the world, everyone will be remembered during the rewards season.)