In some scenes, their surroundings are no more believable than the back projection we see them using when they’re shooting Way Out West. Even the supposedly shabby hotels where Laurel and Hardy stay at the start of the tour seem warm and cosy. Everywhere, there are spotless steam trains, shiny vintage cars and well-cut suits. It’s also suffused with that nostalgia for mid-20th-Century Britain that is currently keeping the UK’s film industry afloat (see also: Breathe, Their Finest, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and many more). Directed by Jon S Baird (Filth) and written by Jeff Pope (Philomena), Stan & Ollie glows with respect and affection for its title characters, their long and loyal friendship and their immortal comic brilliance. But the film-makers are too deeply in love with Laurel and Hardy to take them anywhere so dark. The film could easily have been depressing – a tragedy, even, in which a pair of 60-something has-beens face that final curtain. Film review: Robert Pattinson stars in High Life “I think it’s amazing that you two are still going strong,” chirps one woman in Stan & Ollie, a comedy drama about the 1953 tour, “still using the same old material!” Their fans’ praise could be pretty painful, too. Hardy had heart problems and a bad knee, which made it painful for him to get through their routines. Almost as hapless as the half-witted bumblers they played in their classic films, they couldn’t find work in the US, and so they set off on a tour of British theatres – half-empty British theatres, at that.
In 1953, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were no longer the box-office giants they had been, but they weren’t yet the legends they’d become.
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