You’re Darn Tootin’ (1928) - film review

Stan and Ollie are two musicians who play not by ear or by note but by brute force.  When they bring a public recital to a disastrous climax, they are dismissed by an irate orchestra leader.  With no money to pay their rent, the boys are sent packing by their landlady and try to earn a living by busking in the street.  The public are not equipped to appreciate their musical talents and an exasperated Stan and Ollie begin to take their frustration out on each other.  Passers-by are drawn into their tit-for-tat squabble, so that within minutes the whole street is awash with people ripping off each other’s trousers and indulging in some serious shin kicking...

Widely regarded as one of the best of Laurel and Hardy’s silent shorts, You’re Darn Tootin’ sees the comedy duo firmly established in the guise that we know them today, two hopeless losers cut adrift in an unsympathetic world, tethered to one another by an unbreakable friendship and an unerring ability to make life Hell for everyone around them. 

The film ends, as several of their silent shorts did, with a climactic mob fight scene, but instead of the more usual bout of custard pie flinging (seen in The Battle of the Century), we have the even more surreal spectacle of grown men ripping off each other’s trousers.  Before we get to this frenetic side-splitting climax, there is a plethora of perfectly executed sight gags which are just as funny: Ollie getting his bottom scorched by a gas torch, Stan failing to keep his clarinet in one piece whenever he starts blowing it, and a concert recital that collapses like a house of cards.  Supremely daft but great fun.

© Brian Evans 2010

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