It's almost impossible to imagine this Laurel and Hardy film being commissioned nowadays. Quite apart from the fact it's a short, The Music Box contains many elements that mean such a picture could never be commissioned in a shallower, demographics-led age. A film about two middle-aged, not exactly attractive men? No love interest, just a woman to order the piano, and a mother to be kicked up the backside by Stan? And the whole film's about them moving a piano?
Yet this was 1932 and for that we must be grateful. While The Music Box may seem a little singular in it's intent, it should be noted that the piano reaches the top of the stairs by the half-way point, and only gets to fall down them three times. (They take it back down for a fourth). On the downside, despite being their sole Oscar-winner (for Best Short Subjects, Comedy), the humour does seem a little more forced than usual, and the cuts more notable. Note how the "piano" floats when it first falls into the pond, then the picture cuts to allow it to sink.
While the thought of Stan and Ollie taking a piano up some stairs, getting it to the top, then taking it back down again when told there was an easier way to do it is funny, you have to ask yourself are even Laurel and Hardy that dumb? The second half is the better, if less remembered segment. Here the duo demolish a house while trying to install the piano, with a highlight being the pair's Dixieland tap dance. While arguably the best remembered of all Laurel and Hardy's films, certainly of their shorts, The Music Box isn't them at their best. However, even below standard L & H is well above everybody else's average, and we must be grateful for a time, long ago, when such a project would get a producer's green light.
Yet this was 1932 and for that we must be grateful. While The Music Box may seem a little singular in it's intent, it should be noted that the piano reaches the top of the stairs by the half-way point, and only gets to fall down them three times. (They take it back down for a fourth). On the downside, despite being their sole Oscar-winner (for Best Short Subjects, Comedy), the humour does seem a little more forced than usual, and the cuts more notable. Note how the "piano" floats when it first falls into the pond, then the picture cuts to allow it to sink.
While the thought of Stan and Ollie taking a piano up some stairs, getting it to the top, then taking it back down again when told there was an easier way to do it is funny, you have to ask yourself are even Laurel and Hardy that dumb? The second half is the better, if less remembered segment. Here the duo demolish a house while trying to install the piano, with a highlight being the pair's Dixieland tap dance. While arguably the best remembered of all Laurel and Hardy's films, certainly of their shorts, The Music Box isn't them at their best. However, even below standard L & H is well above everybody else's average, and we must be grateful for a time, long ago, when such a project would get a producer's green light.