Though all of "Hog Wild" is funny, it's the ending that leaves me helpless with laughter.
Since Mrs. Hardy wants to "get Japan" on her radio, Oliver and Stanley are planning to install an aerial on top of the house. You can guess the kinds of mishaps that follow.
Eventually, they decide to place the ladder on top of Stan's car. Bad idea. While Oliver is climbing the ladder, Stan mistakenly starts the car, and they go whizzing through the city streets. Stan cries, Ollie hangs on for dear life.
When they come up alongside a double decker bus, the women on the upper deck are stunned to see a man on a ladder going by. Oliver, ever the gentleman, tips his hat to them.
Well, eventually Oliver is safely on the ground, where his tearful wife informs him that she is crying not because of his horrible experience, but because the finance man has taken the radio away! Oliver squares his shoulders and resolutely marches over to the car where Stan waits.
The preceding is funny, but what's coming up is sublime. Stan can't get the car to start. He tinkers. He fidgets. He moves levers, including one that causes the car to backfire with a noise like a sonic boom. Oliver sits there expressionless, while his wife continues to cry over the loss of her radio.
Stan keeps working on getting the car to go, including blasting the horn several times. Multiple backfires ring out, to no avail.
No matter how many times I've seen this, I laugh myself silly. Stan is so willing to please but incapable, while Ollie is simply above it all as he sits wordlessly.
Eventually a streetcar bashes into them, crushing the car into a bizarre vehicle in which the front and back wheels almost touch. The streetcar conductor who has hit them doesn't ask if they are OK. Rather, in an enormous voice he roars for them to get out of the way! Ollie merely looks at him, and then silently motions for Stan to move along. And wonder of wonders -- the destroyed car starts on the first try. Stan signals that he is turning on to the road, toots the horn, and pulls out. Oliver is stoic. His necktie flaps in the breeze.
I love Laurel and Hardy, and I'm not sure I can explain why. Perhaps it's their undaunted spirit. In this case, they destroyed Oliver's house for nothing, since the radio was taken away. They now have a destroyed car, which ironically runs better now than it did when it was whole.
Stan has yet again helped to ruin everything that Oliver owned, but he is content to continue striving, even in a ravaged car that supposedly will take them back to the remnants of the Hardy house.
Meanwhile, Oliver has not a word to say. Broken, but not beaten.
The world is a better place because they lived.
Since Mrs. Hardy wants to "get Japan" on her radio, Oliver and Stanley are planning to install an aerial on top of the house. You can guess the kinds of mishaps that follow.
Eventually, they decide to place the ladder on top of Stan's car. Bad idea. While Oliver is climbing the ladder, Stan mistakenly starts the car, and they go whizzing through the city streets. Stan cries, Ollie hangs on for dear life.
When they come up alongside a double decker bus, the women on the upper deck are stunned to see a man on a ladder going by. Oliver, ever the gentleman, tips his hat to them.
Well, eventually Oliver is safely on the ground, where his tearful wife informs him that she is crying not because of his horrible experience, but because the finance man has taken the radio away! Oliver squares his shoulders and resolutely marches over to the car where Stan waits.
The preceding is funny, but what's coming up is sublime. Stan can't get the car to start. He tinkers. He fidgets. He moves levers, including one that causes the car to backfire with a noise like a sonic boom. Oliver sits there expressionless, while his wife continues to cry over the loss of her radio.
Stan keeps working on getting the car to go, including blasting the horn several times. Multiple backfires ring out, to no avail.
No matter how many times I've seen this, I laugh myself silly. Stan is so willing to please but incapable, while Ollie is simply above it all as he sits wordlessly.
Eventually a streetcar bashes into them, crushing the car into a bizarre vehicle in which the front and back wheels almost touch. The streetcar conductor who has hit them doesn't ask if they are OK. Rather, in an enormous voice he roars for them to get out of the way! Ollie merely looks at him, and then silently motions for Stan to move along. And wonder of wonders -- the destroyed car starts on the first try. Stan signals that he is turning on to the road, toots the horn, and pulls out. Oliver is stoic. His necktie flaps in the breeze.
I love Laurel and Hardy, and I'm not sure I can explain why. Perhaps it's their undaunted spirit. In this case, they destroyed Oliver's house for nothing, since the radio was taken away. They now have a destroyed car, which ironically runs better now than it did when it was whole.
Stan has yet again helped to ruin everything that Oliver owned, but he is content to continue striving, even in a ravaged car that supposedly will take them back to the remnants of the Hardy house.
Meanwhile, Oliver has not a word to say. Broken, but not beaten.
The world is a better place because they lived.