Silent Films: pre-team 1921-1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1928 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1929 Laurel and Hardy sound films (alphabetical order): A-Haunting We Will Go Air Raid Wardens Another Fine Mess Any Old Port! Atoll K (aka Utopia) Babes In Toyland Beau Hunks Be Big! Below Zero Berth Marks The Big Noise Block-Heads Blotto The Bohemian Girl Bonnie Scotland Brats The Bullfighters Busy Bodies Chickens Come Home - The Chimp A Chump At Oxford Come Clean County Hospital The Dancing Masters The Devil's Brother aka Fra Diavolo Dirty Work The Fixer Uppers The Flying Deuces Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother Going Bye-Bye! Great Guns Helpmates Hog Wild The Hoose-Gow Jitterbugs Laughing Gravy The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case The Live Ghost Me And My Pal Men O'War The Midnight Patrol The Music Box Night Owls Nothing But Trouble Oliver The Eighth One Good Turn Our Relations Our Wife Pack Up Your Troubles Pardon Us Perfect Day Saps At Sea Scram! Sons of the Desert Swiss Miss Their First Mistake Them Thar Hills They Go Boom! Thicker Than Water Tit For Tat Towed In A Hole Twice Two Unaccustomed As We Are Utopia (aka Atoll K) Way Out West Specials: Cameos Cartoons For Love Or Mummy Laurel and Hardy Memories "Stan"

Babes In Toyland Year: 1934 Screenplay by: Nick Ginde and Frank Butler Adapted from: the musical by Victor Hertbert and Glen MacDonough Directed by: Charles Rogers and Gus Meins Duration: 78m DVD Availability Try amazon (region 1)/sendit.com (region 2) Viewpoint: "That's the silliest thing I've ever seen." Babes in Toyland is unique in the Laurel and Hardy canon, a film like no other they made. This isn't actually a good thing, because while they undoubtebly appeal to children, and have childish films in their body of work (The Chimp et al) this is their only movie which is specifically targetted at the junior age range. Their character names - Ollie Dee and Stannie Dum - give an idea of how contrived and twee it is, though the real problem is that devoid of their usual social context it neutralises their humour. No longer are Stan and Ollie overgrown forces of nature, but instead they're almost fictionalised characters within a fantasy land, an environment where Stan falling out of a window is almost normal, rather than the usual uproarious misalignment of convention. To this end, the dovetailing plot elements (the soldiers, the pee wees…) seem more contrived than usual, and the comic set pieces (Ollie pushes Stan in a lake, forgetting that Stan's keeping his watch safe for him) seem predictable. No longer is Ollie the audience identifying everyman, to whom fate deals continual misfortune, but a man in a wig and silly costume to whom misfortune must happen in order to make the movie operate as a filmic pantomime. Babes in Toyland isn't without subtext, and with a climax that sees white-clothed women and children being dragged from their homes by animalistic creatures in tribal dress then there's certainly a case to be had for reaching for your book on Kaplan. There's also some apparent intertextual referencing, with Henry Brandon playing a typical silent film villain in sound, a bespectacled man who, Potemkin style, holds a child aloft as he cries out. Except this time his cries are those of a madman in a climax that is perhaps quite scary for the very young. Though this is quite a morally askew children's movie that sees the heroes of the piece using thievery and deception as ways of avoiding paying their mortgage, and dropping rocks on the "villain's" head. On points of trivia, then you may have seen this film under the titles "March of the Toys", "Toyland", or, most commonly, "March of the Wooden Soldiers". However, as these are reissue titles not alternate release titles (not to mention, in the case of the latter, spoiler-effective) then I haven't included them as additional menu options like I have with Utopia/Atoll K. Babes in Toyland is also quite famous for being arguably the film that drew the most ill feeling between Stan and Hal Roach, Stan virtually throwing Roach's script out the window. For the record, then Ollie was slated to be the Pieman, while Stan would have been Simple Simon (probably playing on stereotyped characterisation too much) and the villain would have been a giant spider. As a Laurel and Hardy film then Babes In Toyland's definitely a star lower than the final rating I'm going to give it. But it earns its average rating on the basis of being competently made. Direction, sets and special effects are all reasonably ingenious and inspired for the time, while it's clear that Felix Knights must have been chosen for his singing voice rather than his acting as he makes a good stab of the musical numbers. I do wonder why Ollie's melodic tenor wasn't given a workout, and the fact that the songs are operatic numbers is perhaps a testament to why this hasn't become a Christmas staple like The Wizard of Oz. All in all, okay as a film, though a world away from Stan and Ollie vehicles like Below Zero and Their First Mistake. I loved it as a kid, its target audience, but as an adult I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to sit through it again.