Review: Stan & Ollie

Stan & Ollie (PG)

UK/Canada/USA 2018  98 mins  Dir: Jon S. Baird  Cast: John C. Reilly, Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, Danny Huston, Nina Arianda, Rufus Jones

A small film – some might say TV-sized, though such distinctions are being rapidly eroded – but an enormously likeable one, this twilight years showbiz biopic succeeds by dint of its warm and affectionate nature even as it serves up such clichés as the clown crying on the inside and the big ‘show must go on’ finale. Worrying early promo photographs looked like Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly doing cheap impersonations, but they really do disappear into their characters, expertly adopting the great comic duo’s mannerisms without succumbing to caricature.

The film opens in style with a lengthy Scorsese/De Palma-esque tracking shot following Stan (Coogan) and Ollie (Reilly) as they arrive on the set of their great 1936 triumph Way Out West to perform that celebrated dance routine. Already the cracks are beginning to show, as Stan jousts with hard-nosed producer Hal Roach (Huston) over cash. Suddenly, we’re in 1953. The duo’s star has dimmed considerably, they have multiple divorces behind them, and there’s festering bad blood over an “elephant movie” (1939’s Zenobia, though it’s not named here) as they pitch up at a grim, rain-lashed Newcastle hotel for the start of a UK stage tour booked by oily impresario Bernard Delfont (Jones). Stan is main mover behind this jaunt, as he intends to demonstrate the double-act’s continuing popularity in order to secure financial backing for their comeback ‘Robin Hood picture’. But audiences are sparse at first. Abbott and Costello are the new big-screen comedy duo on the block, while the evasive Delfont, who struggles to manage his charges’ expectations, is more interested in that fresh-faced young Norman Wisdom fella.

Writer Jeff Pope, who previously collaborated with Coogan on Philomena, takes some risks by incorporating routines from Laurel and Hardy’s act into their real lives, even contriving to get them in bed together at one point. But this isn’t overdone or too knowing and provides a charming reminder of their perfect comic timing. Coogan and Reilly aren’t the only great double-act here, as Rufus Jones’s Bernard Delfont observes wryly when L&H’s spouses eventually arrive for the last leg of the tour. Nina Arianda as Stan’s brash and pushy Russian wife Ida, who’s eager to remind everyone that she once worked with Preston Sturges, and Shirley Henderson as Ollie’s tiny, squeaky, protective better half bounce off one another brilliantly. It’s a real joy when all four bickering characters share the screen in this touching, elegiac ode to the vicissitudes of lifelong friendship, whose recreation such moments of slapstick comedy genius as the railway waiting room scene should have everyone scurrying for that Laurel and Hardy box set (or new-fangled streaming equivalent).

Parochial note: local location spotters may be disappointed to find that Bristol appears in only two brief scenes. And even though the Bristol Hippodrome was visited by the duo on that tour, it does not appear as itself, the rear exterior doubling instead for Newcastle’s Queen’s Hall. Later in the film, the Balmoral and city docks from the backdrop to Stan and Ollie’s arrival in Ireland.