Be Big! (1931)
Stan and Ollie are on their way to Atlantic City with their wives, when Ollie gets a phone call from a lodge buddy telling him that a stag party is taking place that night in their honor. Ollie pretends to be sick and sends the wives on ahead, promising that he and Stan will meet them in the morning. The pair dress in their lodge gear, but their wives return having missed their train. With no obvious escape route, Stan and Ollie take to a bed in fear and in response to Stan's plea of "What'll I do?", Ollie replies "Be big!".
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Wonderfully offbeat film!
Great visuals, story delivers no surprises
Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Once again the boys try to fool their wives by feigning illness. This time instead of taking them to Atlantic City, Ollie gets wind of a stag at their lodge and apparently it's in his honor. After convincing Stan that he is not actually sick, they set about preparing for the event. However, it takes half the episode to get Stan's boots off Ollie, who has accidentally put them on. Stan's boots are way too small. Nothing ever works out because the women have to return and the boys are caught red handed. Nevertheless, while the women are away, things are hilarious. We would ask ourselves, if this were a realistic venue, why these guys are so cavalier in their efforts to try to get up to something when these things are doomed.
A tangled web is what Laurel and Hardy end up in when they try to deceive their wives while getting ready for a trip to Atlantic City to go to their lodge instead. Left alone (with Hardy pretending to be sick), the two wrestle over Oliver ending up in Laurel's boots, and their desperate attempts to get them off. Between a boot jack, a badly places tack, a Murphy bed and a floor level bathtub, the boys will get their share of abused especially when the wives come home. It's a plot device they tried several times with different scenarios, most famously in "Sons of the Desert", a feature. This one, in abbreviated mode, is practically just as good.
Up until a few years ago I had disliked Laurel and Hardy, until my wife, who is a fan forced me to watch some of their better movies, for example Way out West and Sons of the Desert.Watching this particular effort, however, reminded me of why I had disliked them so much in the first place.It starts out brightly enough with the boys trying to pull the wool over their wives' eyes in order to go to a stag party in their honour but then it loses it's way. The centrepiece is an over-extended sequence where Ollie is trying to remove a boot. After ten minutes of this I was heartily wishing it hadn't got stuck as well For dedicated fans only
A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short. The Boys are all set to take their wives for a weekend in Atlantic City when Ollie discovers that the gang at the club are going to hold a stag party in their honor that very night. Feigning a terrific nervous headache, he gets Stanley to agree to send the wives on ahead by themselves. Now Ollie & Stanley can dress for the party - except for the little matter of Stanley's boots on Ollie's feet. If the wives find out they've been tricked, the Boys had better face their wrath like grownups and BE BIG!This is a very funny film, relying almost entirely on slapstick humor - one has to wonder how Ollie could take those falls without seriously hurting himself. Watching him strain to get Stanley's boot off his right leg is genuinely exhausting and will make all fat men ache in sympathy.