Customer Reviews

Big Noise [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although I've read terrible reviews about this movie I thought it was relatively amusing. Nothing incredibly funny but then again it wasn't a pure stinker either. The whole movie was pretty well strung together...not a bad movie for the whole family to enjoy. I thought Laurel & Hardy despite their age were very good in this one.

Great comedy by Stan and Ollie, our favorite
comedians. Interesting plot with the boys
playing two amateur detective, when all their
experience is in being janitors!They are trying
to keep a secret WWII weapon out of the hands
of a gang of con men. L&H stay at the house of the
rather eccentric,and somewhat twisted-minded
professor and his interesting family to guard
"The Big Noise". It's a film that'll make you proud
to be a American and a fan of Laurel and Hardy,American Heroes!

With impressive sets, nice photography, nifty props, and a crazy plot involving an eccentric inventor, it's too bad that the picture is a (pause) dud. Just a few minor changes and you have a pretty good comedy - sadly, it looks like most of the effort went into sets and costuming, etc., instead of strong scripting and directing. For example, L & H are janitors assigned to cleaning a Detective agency. An after-hours call comes in to the place, and Ollie picks up the phone while Stan messes with a grating vacuum cleaner. The noise subsides and Ollie accepts a Detective's job because he and Stan are studying to be Detectives. I can imagine how the Hal Roach Studio might have developped the scene: the vacuum cleaner creates such a din that Ollie thinks they are being summoned as Janitors, and later they agree to transport the bomb as a kind of additional duty. Bumbling Janitors transporting a bomb is much funnier than bumbling Detective Trainees transporting a bomb. There are many other golden opportunities which are not realized. Anyway, it's not their worst movie as some critics would have you believe. (Rating is a LOW **).

The Big Noise isn't the worst L&H film, far from it. Though it certainly isn't anywhere near their best. It is a fun little film with several good gags and a pleasant tone. Fans of the Boys will be pleasantly surprised, and youngsters just getting to know the joys of L&H will love it.

"The Big Noise" (1944) does not rank among the best Laurel and Hardy comedies. However, it's not their all-time worst, as many critics have claimed. Despite their age and lack of creative input, Stan and Ollie provide a few classic routines in this wartime escapade. Children will enjoy "The Big Noise" more than adults, but the uninitiated should seek out "The Music Box" (1932) and "Way Out West" (1937).

THE BIG NOISE has a reputation as Laurel and Hardy's worst film. It's no classic, to be sure, but it does have a fair number of funny scenes and isn't quite the disaster some make it out to be.The story has would-be detectives Stan and Ollie safeguarding a powerful bomb dubbed "The Big Noise." This gets them mixed up with the bomb's eccentric inventor (Arthur Space), the inventor's nutty family (one of whom is played by a young Robert Blake), and thieves intent on obtaining the bomb.Stan and Ollie improvise numerous bits of business throughout to bolster the admittedly anemic screenplay. One of the best scenes has the boys sharing a cramped berth on a train (reworked from their early talkie BERTHMARKS). Interestingly, Stan Laurel initially objected to redoing the old scene, but it plays great, and gets an added kick from the presence of comic drunk Jack Norton. Norton and Phil Van Zandt (as sinister thief Dutchy Glassman) are standouts among the supporting cast. The video transfer is sharp and clear and hey, you gotta love the opening theme music!

Laurel and Hardy were getting on in years by the time this film was made in 1944, and while the general consensus is they were well past their prime, it's my contention that great comedians are never past their prime. The pair was as skilled and resourceful at getting laughs in 1944 as they were in 1934. It's also apparent that the film's plotline - about the pair delivering a wacky inventor's super-bomb to the government - has given too many reviewers an easy gag line by condemning the film with bits like: "Laurel and Hardy sure do deliver a bomb!" Well I disagree. This film made me laugh when I first saw it over 25 years ago, and it continues to make me laugh to this day. In this world where it seems like everything The Three Stooges ever did is treated as high art, why is this hilarious example of comic insanity constantly degraded? So what if many of the scenes are remakes of ones the duo did previously; they still knew how to milk them for a million laughs. And the upper-berth scene with Jack Norton's drunk - priceless. Ditto Arthur Space's hammer happy inventor. Malcolm St. Clair's direction is right on the money. This is not meant to be the real world; this is the comic's world, where anything can happen. Frankly, I consider THE BIG NOISE to be an absurdist masterwork right up there with the best of Chaplin, Keaton, Fields, and the Marx Bros. There are precious few films that have kept me laughing over a quarter of a century, and this is one of them. So if some people out there want to condemn this film as a bad comedy - go ahead. You can go catch the latest Adam Sandler epic playing at the cineplex, and you're welcome to it. In the meantime, I'll keep and cherish my tape of THE BIG NOISE, and hope that Fox eventually puts it out on DVD. Since it made it out onto tape at all I have to figure that someone out there has good taste...

(Contains spoilers.)

While it's true that L&H's post-1940 films don't enjoy the greatest reputation, it's not true that they're all horrible either. Unfortunately, this isn't one of the better ones from that crop. There are a number of good funny moments in this one, even a few bordering on great, but nothing really memorable or liable to send anyone but young children into hysterics. The sub-plot with the spies who want to steal the eccentric scientist's bomb takes up a little too much screentime, at times giving the feeling that L&H are more like guest stars in their own movie. And a lot of the funniest bits are gags from earlier films and shorts, like 'Berth Marks,' 'Oliver the Eighth,' and 'The Flying Deuces.' We can just picture how this storyline would have played out had it been made at Hal Roach Studios, and it's not the way it's handled here. It does start out pretty good, but it just has the feeling of a lot of great opportunities wasted, a hit-and-miss movie. If only they'd had one of their old foils to play against, there might have been a hint of that old magical sparkle, the way there is when Edgar Kennedy comes back to play the foil in 'Air Raid Wardens.' Although the child actor who plays the inventor's bratty son did a really great job in his role of being an annoying brat; it's too bad he doesn't get punished for all the trouble he causes. (The back of the video also mentions that, in keeping with wartime regulations, there was no waste in this movie as in previous ones, no pies thrown, houses demolished, clothes ripped, although we clearly see that Ollie's clothes do rip during this movie, as well as the paint Stan accidentally sprays on the painting.)

The ending also makes no sense; one moment Stan and Ollie are parachuting out of the out of control plane to avoid being further shot at by the soldiers who are training down below, unknowing there are people in the plane they're supposed to shoot, and then all of a sudden they're over the ocean, looking down at a ship with a Japanese flag and a Japanese man talking to a Nazi? As it's been pointed out by some, they never would have dropped a bomb on anyone on purpose in their Hal Roach days, not even if it were wartime. That's not the kind of people they are. It's a wonder the bomb didn't go off earlier, the way Stan kept manhandling the accordion he hid it in, but now to get rid of it they'll bomb an enemy ship instead of taking it on to Washington like they were instructed to do? And why in the world should we believe that nobody knew about this enemy ship planning an attack on the U.S. when the Army base is apparently right nextdoor? And where in the world do they land after they've dropped the bomb? There are so many unanswered questions the average viewer probably has after seeing this confusing ending that comes out of nowhere!

In his video guide,Leonard Maltin described The Big Noise as Laurel & Hardy's worst film.If you ask me,he's exaggerating.In fact,I find this to be one of their best and funniest movies.There is a lot of laughs in this film.

In 1944 before the atomic bomb became public knowledge
it was humor for an inventor to come up with a
very powerful explosive.
The comedy here is classic L&H with both a little on the plump side.
A pretty blond and a black widow round out the cast besides the little Indian who makes some trouble for his father the inventor.
I liked it, but it was a little slow even with the apartment of the future and the new explosive.