Monday Night Film Series presents, 'Stan and Ollie' -FR

Event Details:

The Monday Night Film Series presents, 'Stan & Ollie.'  Laurel and Hardy, the world's most famous comedy duo, attempt to reignite their film careers as they embark on what becomes their swan song - a grueling theatre tour of post-war Britain.

Already legends by 1953, beloved comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy set out to perform live shows for their adoring fans. The tour becomes a hit, but long-buried tension and Hardy's failing health start to threaten their new act and friendship.

Stan Laurel, the slimmer British half of Hollywood double act Laurel and Hardy, was not one to wax lyrical about the art or mystique of comedy: “You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly,” he said, making vaudeville performance sound altogether as methodical and prosaic as shopping for groceries. No matter how ebullient their joint mugging, Laurel and Hardy’s slapstick routines were work, not play. In Stan & Ollie, a gently elegiac portrayal of the pair’s final comic collaboration — a low-rent music hall tour of the U.K. and Ireland in 1953 — the physical and emotional toll of that labor finally shows through their threadbare antics. Well-rehearsed performance chemistry is merely a veneer behind which the two veterans, as tenderly played by Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, find themselves struggling to click.

This is mellow, twilight-mood material that would have one direction to shuffle in even if it weren’t bound to biographical fact, but it’s a moving wind-down, teased by mortal concerns as well as an existential fear more unique to the thespian life: What can an actor do without an act? Lest things get too morose, however, the quick, verbally limber script by Jeff Pope (Coogan’s co-writer on “Philomena”) lends some welcome itch-and-scratch to proceedings, as does the spry, spritzy friction worked up by the ensemble. Reilly and Coogan may obviously hog the spotlight here, but a secondary, more peppery personality duel between Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda, both ideally cast as the comedians’ contrastingly skeptical wives Lucille and Ida, more surprisingly lands many of the film’s loudest laughs.

This term, 15 limited release, independent foreign and Canadian films will be shown. Admission is $8/film, but a half-yearly $12 student film society membership reduces admission cost to $5/film. The series is open to all. Memberships are available at Tilley 102 every Monday night.

For further info, contact NB Film Co-op at 506-455-1632 or info@nbfilmcoop.com.

The NB Film Co-op in partnership with the UNB Faculty of Arts and the Toronto Film Festival presents the series.

Building: Tilley Hall

Room Number: 102