STAN & OLLIE

"Stan & Ollie" may be the saddest film you will see all year; it is also one of the funniest. It's the story of the concert tour Laurel and Hardy took to the UK and Ireland in 1953 and in these roles Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly are pitch-perfect and in Oscar-worthy form, (the failure of either actor to be nominated is another badge of shame for the Academy). The reason for the tour, presumably, was to raise money for a Robin Hood film which they hoped would mark their comeback to the big screen. The money never materialized and the film was never made though judging by the material on view here it might have been a classic.

They were, of course, like an old married couple; bickering, fighting but clearly very much in love and the film is often heartbreaking as it shows how out of favor they were, playing to near-empty houses at the start of the tour until coaxed by Bernard Delfont, (a smarmy Rufus Jones), into making 'personal appearances' to boost their publicity, yet even when they started to play in sold-out venues, things didn't always run smoothly between them. Stan blamed Ollie for abandoning him at the height of his career, although it was Stan who got the sack for bad behavior while Ollie counter-attacked saying they were never friends to begin with but just working partners. Of course, that wasn't true; they were life-long friends who seemed to be as funny off-screen as on while both Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda are also superb as the wives who were something of a double act in their own right. This is a small film, certainly not ostentatious in any way but in this case, small is very definitely beautiful.