Stan & Ollie **** (2018, Steve Coogan, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda, Danny Huston, Rufus Jones) – Movie Review

Stan & Ollie (2018) is a labour of love, a loving tribute to Laurel and Hardy, with brilliant impersonations of the duo by Steve Coogan and John C Reilly, and clever re-creations of their routines, songs and gags. Even so, the real Laurel and Hardy might not have appreciated this desperately sad, bitter-sweet tribute as they come over as quite sad and pathetic in old age on their troubled final stage tour of the UK.

Nevertheless, sad, bitter-sweet though Stan & Ollie is, it is warm, funny and compelling, and, above all, respectful, almost reverential. And that is right and proper. Stan & Ollie were great – are great. Their very considerable amount of film work almost entirely survives, and, after a gap in the Fifties, their value and esteem is high. And that is right and proper.

Coogan and Reilly are among the last actors in the world a casting director would call to cast as Laurel and Hardy, but they are superb, helped by lots of great make-up prosthetics. They are uncanny representations of the great comedy duo. Coogan and Reilly still look a bit like Coogan and Reilly, but mostly they look and act like Laurel and Hardy. They are as good as Helen Mirren as HMQ in The Queen, even better maybe. It is easy now to say that Coogan and Reilly were born to play L&H. Have they been practising these roles all their lives? It sure looks like it.

The film opens at the height of their fame just pre-war when they are fighting their mean-with-money producer Hal Roach (Jack Huston), or at least Stan is. Ollie is much too nice and easy-going to be fighting anyone. Stan is the business man and the script man and the technical man. Ollie, of course, is just effortlessly funny.

Laurel and Hardy fall out as Stan walks away from Roach when his contract ends. With his contract still running, Ollie makes another film without him, hence the falling out, with Stan feeling betrayed.

It would be good to have a bit more of this section of the movie with the boys at the height of their fame. It would balance the rest of the film better, and also give Huston more of a chance to establish a character as Roach. It feels a tiny bit skimpy and rushed. This is the bit where we have to learn how and why L&H are the greatest.

We shoot ahead to 1953, with the duo arriving in the UK, greeted by cheesy theatre impresario Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones, funny), portrayed as a phony and a luvvie. Laurel and Hardy’s fame has declined. People in the UK think they have retired. Many people don’t know who they are any more. Delfont books them in at a cheap provincial hotel and a small provincial theatre. They want to get to London as promised – and play the Lyceum – but on the way the bigger theatres are being played by new Brit star Norman Wisdom. Laurel and Hardy don’t know who he is.

Delfont gets the boys to do endless publicity sessions, turning the half empty theatres round into packed ones. Laurel and Hardy seem endlessly patient, courteous and amenable. They are doing the tour while their new movie gets its act together.

Once they arrive finally in London, the wives arrive from the US. Nina Arianda is hilarious as Ida Laurel. She is splendidly camp and bossy, not at all the wife you’d expect Stan to have. In a less showy role, Shirley Henderson is really good as Lucille Hardy, a little bit tough but very caring and loving. Well, if Stan could love Ollie, why not Lucille? Everyone loved Ollie. He was the loveable one. Not that Stan wasn’t loveable too. He was. But he was a tougher nut to crack.

Finally Stan and Ollie’s good humour breaks. The old sore of the temporary break-up years ago rears its ugly head. It is the chink in their armour. It is like a lovers’ tiff. Are the couple going to break up?

The sometimes seedy, sometimes posh art deco Fifties UK atmosphere is well and attractively conjured up. Director Jon S Baird’s film looks good, a treat. It is a painstaking film, fitting in comfortably with BBC Films’ retro ethos, but it avoids the dead hand of the heritage cinema genre, feeling as fresh as it is funny. And finally it is heart-warming too, managing a real surge of emotion.

Stan & Ollie is smoothly directed by Jon S Baird, who made the very different Filth. He puts a nice polish on it. It is sweetly written by Jeff Pope, who previously wrote the screenplay for Philomena (2013) – also with Coogan.

It is an ideal film to finish the BFI London Film Festival on as the closing gala on 21 October 2018. Frustratingly, the UK release is not till 11 January 2019.

Reilly was Golden Globe nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Coogan is nominated for Best Leading Actor at the BAFTA Film Awards 2019, where Stan & Ollie is nominated for Outstanding British Film of the Year and Best Make Up/ Hair (Mark Coulier, Jeremy Woodhead).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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