I've been catching a slew of the old Laurel and Hardy films and shorts on cable recently, most of them from the Twenties and Thirties. This one from 1944 held a couple of notable differences for me. First off, because it was an MGM movie the production values were a lot better, having more to do with the improvement in filming technology than anything else I imagine, although the budget would probably have been a factor as well. But the other thing was how much Stan had aged and filled out his features, it seemed to make him less funny. Ollie not so much, he looked more like the 'old' Ollie than Stan looked like the 'old' Stan, if you get my meaning.
Parting from the Roach Studio format was also apparent. There was more of an emphasis on a story that included other players, so it took the Boys out of the action from time to time. The main plot seemed a little troubling to me, an elderly Prince Saul (Philip Merivale) was in league with a colleague named Ronetz (John Warburton) to poison the pre-teen King of Orlandia (David Leland), apparently in order to affect the line of succession. Obviously with Laurel and Hardy on the case, this wasn't going to happen, but it does seem a grisly topic for one of their stories.
Though the backdrop of World War II is never mentioned by name, one can't miss the reference to using ration cards at the market, a staple of the era. I wonder what modern day viewers think of that if they've never learned what rationing was all about. For their trouble though, the slab of horse meat Stan and Ollie swiped from the hungry lion proved disastrous as a dinner menu item at the Hawley's. But it did lead to that funny scene with the two-man saw trying to carve it up for eating.
The young actor portraying King Christopher looked familiar, however it was shocking to look up his credits page on IMDb and learn that David Leland died at the age of sixteen, some four years after this picture was made. He looked like he might have had a successful career moving forward, so there's that unhappy element on which to close this review. For his part, Leland's character was presented as a typical royal who preferred to be a commoner, and he had a finely tuned rapport with Stan and Ollie.
Parting from the Roach Studio format was also apparent. There was more of an emphasis on a story that included other players, so it took the Boys out of the action from time to time. The main plot seemed a little troubling to me, an elderly Prince Saul (Philip Merivale) was in league with a colleague named Ronetz (John Warburton) to poison the pre-teen King of Orlandia (David Leland), apparently in order to affect the line of succession. Obviously with Laurel and Hardy on the case, this wasn't going to happen, but it does seem a grisly topic for one of their stories.
Though the backdrop of World War II is never mentioned by name, one can't miss the reference to using ration cards at the market, a staple of the era. I wonder what modern day viewers think of that if they've never learned what rationing was all about. For their trouble though, the slab of horse meat Stan and Ollie swiped from the hungry lion proved disastrous as a dinner menu item at the Hawley's. But it did lead to that funny scene with the two-man saw trying to carve it up for eating.
The young actor portraying King Christopher looked familiar, however it was shocking to look up his credits page on IMDb and learn that David Leland died at the age of sixteen, some four years after this picture was made. He looked like he might have had a successful career moving forward, so there's that unhappy element on which to close this review. For his part, Leland's character was presented as a typical royal who preferred to be a commoner, and he had a finely tuned rapport with Stan and Ollie.