Me and My Pal

[StevePulaski]

Me and My Pal (1933)
Directed by: Charles Rogers

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy doing a puzzle in Me and My Pal.

Rating: ★★½

Me and My Pal concerns Oliver Hardy, who is anxious as can be on his wedding day, as he's not only about to marry a beautiful lady but also become an "oil magnate," thanks to her father Pete Cucumber (Jimmy Finlayson) and his enthusiastic support for his daughter's fiancee. Just before he is about to leave for the wedding, Stan Laurel, Hardy's best man, arrives after ordering the flowers for the reception with a jigsaw puzzle. While Hardy initially rejects it as a distraction, both men can't help but become entranced in trying to solve the puzzle, so much so they become incredibly tardy for the wedding, worrying Hardy's bride-to-be and angering Cucumber. Soon, after the butler and the driver become immersed in solving the puzzle, nobody is going anywhere, and Cucumber leaves the wedding to find and scold Hardy.

Me and My Pal is an intriguing short because the humor, for once in a Laurel and Hardy short, is neither brought forth by situational comedy or verbal banter; the humor of the short is entirely reliant on the fact that everybody becomes fascinated and invested in solving a jigsaw puzzle. It's as if the puzzle has some magical force that sucks anyone around it into solving it, which is where the short finds almost all of its humor. The issue is this isn't the kind of funny that's hilarious, or the kind somebody thinks of when they think of Laurel and Hardy, but the kind of funny that is baffling or contemplative.

Director Charles Rogers wisely keeps this short a slender nineteen minutes because anymore and we'd be far past the threshold for this kind of material. This is one of the strangest shorts by Laurel and Hardy I have yet to see, one that's not brazenly funny but one that finds ways to mystify by subtly invoking a fantasy element without any supernatural behavior. It's not quite amazing, but it's quietly subversive, especially given that these two men had a formula down from their very first shorts that they often stuck with until the end.

Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Jimmy Finlayson. Directed by: Charles Rogers.