Laurel and Hardy made many uproariously funny films, and a few of them are starting to make their way on to DVD.  Warner Brothers and TCM have recently released a pair of the duo's early features, and many of their silent shorts are available from Image.  20th Century Fox has also joined the parade and have put out three of the films that 'The Boys' made for that studio in the early 40's:  The Laurel and Hardy Collection.  Unfortunately these films are among the worst that Laurel and Hardy ever made.  With scripts written by writers who didn't understand the team's comedy style and no creative input from Stan Laurel these three films are utterly forgettable at best.

In 1940, feeling that they weren't getting the attention and freedom that they deserved at the Hal Roach Studios, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made their own film company.  Roach had always refused to give the team a single contract, instead having each comedian under a separate contract with staggered ending dates.  This gave the duo much less negotiating power since no other studios would sign half of Laurel and Hardy to a high paying contract, they were at Roach's mercy to a large extent.

They refused to sign with Roach again, and though Stan thought that this move would give him total creative control, he was sadly mistaken.  The pair signed with 20th Century Fox that same year and all of Laurel's creative input was also signed away.  In the heyday of the studio system, Laurel and Hardy were regulated to a B-movie unit, and became cogs in a movie making machine.  They had no say over scripts, production values or editing, something that Stan Laurel had always had when they were with Roach.  Instead they found themselves with poor scripts with lame gags that didn't understand the characters that the pair had refined for a decade and a half.  They were put into formalistic comedies that were more about keeping Washington happy by supporting the war effort (and therefore not having film stock rationed, something that the studios dreaded) than creating quality films.

The three movies in this set are:

Great Guns (1941):

The boys first movie for Fox, the studio decided to cash in on the success of Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates, a runaway hit for Universal, and put Laurel and Hardy in the army.

Stan and Laurel are domestic servants for a rich young man who's a bit frail, Dan (Dick Nelson).  When Dan gets drafted (he's happy about it too since he'll escape his doting aunts) Oliver and Hardy enlist too in order to protect their master.

When they arrive at the training camp, Stan and Laurel find themselves in one mess after another; ending up behind a firing range, messing up breakfast in the mess hall, and of course they are in constant trouble with Sergeant Hippo (Edmund MacDonald).  Meanwhile Dan has lost his heart to the girl at the photo shop, Ginger (Sheila Ryan).  (Though the boys think that she's a gold digger and try to break up the romance, without success.)

This virtual remake of Buck Privates (including the war games at the end) is a really poor imitation of the original.  While Abbott and Costello filled their movie with some great routines that they perfected on the vaudeville stage, the writers of this movie just threw in anything that came into their minds, and just about none of it worked.  The gags aren't thought out and crafted like they were in L&H's previous films.  (The crow down the underwear scene is particularly bad.)  They tried to turn the pair into another Abbott and Costello, loud and brash, something that Laurel and Hardy never were.

The one gag that is effective has Stan carrying one end of a long board off the screen, only to see him carrying the other end too.  The only problem, aside from the fact that this was lifted wholesale from and earlier Laurel and Hardy comedy, The Finishing Touch, was that the gag is used three times, killing any humor that it might have had.
 
There is a lot of propaganda in this film too, something that carries through to the other movies in this set.  Joining army isn't bad at all, Dan's even happy when he's drafted.  The stronger message though is that the draft is fair.  The rich and privileged Dan is drafted, while the hard working Stan and Ollie aren't.  They, being responsible citizens of course, though do join up.  Being a propaganda film isn't a bad thing necessarily, after all who wouldn't want to join up after seeing Casablanca, but this one doesn't work as a comedy or delivers a convincing message.

Jitterbugs (1943):

The best film in this collection, this movie has the boys playing as a zoot suit clad jitterbug band.(!)  Running low on gas during the war time rationing, the pair runs into a con man, Chester Wright (Bob Bailey).  Chester claims that he has invented a pill that will turn water into gasoline.  Fooling the duo by handing them a gallon of real gas, Chester joins the boys in their travels.  He plans on using their act as a front to sell his gas pills.

Soon they meet up with the charming Susan Cowan (Vivian Blaine), who's family has just been swindled out of their estate by a pair of crooks, Corcoran (Robert Emmett Keane) and Bennett (Douglas Fowley).  Falling in love with Susan, Chester comes up with an elaborate scheme to get her family's money back with a little help from his musical partners.

Though this film doesn't come close to the best films Laurel and Hardy made while with Roach, it is the best of their later career, which isn't saying a whole lot.  There are still some fun moments however.  Stan dresses up in drag to play a wealth society woman and Oliver gets to pose as a Southern colonel, and these scenes harken back to their glory days, if only a bit.

The biggest problem with this film is that Laurel and Hardy seem to be just the comic relief for the main plot, almost supporting actors in their own film.  The focus is on the Chester/Susan romance and getting back at the crooks, not on Stan and Laurel.  Nearly one fifth of the entire movie is taken up by Vivian Blaine's singing numbers, and what is the musical "buy war bonds" scene doing in this film?

Big Noise (1944):

If Jitterbugs is the best of this fairly sorry lot, Big Noise is the worst.  Though all of these movies run about 75 minutes, this one seems twice as long as the other two.  This overt piece of propaganda has Stan and Ollie playing janitors who pass themselves off as detectives.  They are hired by an inventor who has created a new powerful bomb and, after spending a harrowing night in his 'house of the future' they set off to transport the bomb to Washington D.C.  Of course they are chased by gangsters who want to steal the weapon and sell it to the Axis powers, and there's the constant danger of the bomb going off too.  Mayhem, though not much of it is funny, ensues.

This movie seems to be an amalgam of gags taken from earlier Laurel and Hardy two-reelers that don't work nearly as well as they originally did.  The most easily recognizable of these is the undressing in bed aboard a train gag from Birth Marks, which was originally uproarious but here seems to drag on and on.  Some of the gags in the inventor's house are cute, but his young son Egbert, played by Robert Blake, is just annoying.

Like the other films in this set, the writers didn't understand how to use Laurel and Hardy.  The pair themselves aren't funny, it's the kooky contraptions and irritating kid that are supposed to get the laughs.  This film comes across as a generic below average comedy from the 40's, not a Laurel and Hardy movie.

In recent years the films that Laurel and Hardy made at Fox and MGM have been reexamined, with some fans deciding that they aren't too bad.  This is true to a certain extent.  They aren't the worst comedies ever made, and they are certainly on par with the films that many poverty row producers were making at the time.

When compared to the earlier L & H films however, these are significantly inferior.  These film have no subtlety to them.  These have Stanley laughing uproariously when Oliver get hurt, and jokes are made about Ollie's weight and Stan is called an idiot.  In the earlier films it was discovering the depths of Laurel's ignorance and lack of mental acuity that was the funny part.  That was the joke, not someone telling him that he was an imbecile.  These films just don't do the comedy pair justice.

Audio:

There films come with the original mono track and a stereo remix.  Both tracks sounded fine, and though there wasn't much in the way of bass, the soundtracks fit the movies well.  There wasn't any hiss or distortion and the dialog was clear.  There are optional subtitles in both Spanish and English.

Video:

The full frame black and white image is very good.  These features have been restored and look like they must have when they were first released.  The contrast is excellent and the level of detail is very good.  The image is clear and crisp and there aren't any digital defects worth mentioning.  An excellent looking set of films.

Extras:

All of these films are accompanied by a commentary track provided by author Randy Skretvedt.  These were very good.  Skretvedt provides an entertaining track and gives a lot of information about the filming and various actors who appear in these films.  In the middle of The Big Noise he even talks about that film's horrible reputation and admits that he actually enjoys it, claiming that it's his second favorite Fox film.  Different strokes I guess.  Each disc also has a series of trailers, and a gallery of stills.
 
In addition to the above bonus material, Great Guns has a newsreel clip of the boys opening the Freemont Theater and participating in a bond rally associated with the opening.

On Jitterbugs there is also a minute and a half newsreel clip that features Stan and Oliver opening a  railroad station.  This is without narration and mainly silent, and shows the boys horsing around for the crowd.
 
The Big Noise includes The Revenge of the Sons of the Desert, a nearly half hour featurette on the Laurel and Hardy fan organization, The Sons of the Desert.  At one of the biannual conventions, people are interviewed about why they enjoy Laurel and Hardy films and the general mayhem is recorded.  This didn't really do much for me.  Seeing a bunch of fans isn't really all that interesting of enlightening, though I'm glad that the group exists and that they have a good time together.
 
Final Thoughts:

Though I am tough on these film, they are some of the worst movies that Laurel and Hardy made, they aren't a total waste.  Every film brought a smile to my face at least once, and Stan and Ollie are such talented comedians that they make even these poor films watchable.  If you've seen their earlier movies that they made with Hal Roach, these will come across as rather sad and pathetic.  The boys have aged a bit and the magic seems to be gone.  That's not their fault, it's more the horrible writers and the fact that they ignored the suggestions that Stan Laurel made.  If you've somehow missed seeing any other L & H films, after seeing these you'll wonder what all the talk is about.  Completists will want to get these, but other should just rent them.  There are much better Laurel and Hardy movies available, and the time it takes to plow through these aren't worth the few laughs and good moments they have.