Dirty Work Review

Now this is a seriously funny film. Stan and Ollie are sent to clean Professor Noodle's Chimney.
Naturally cleaning a chimney for any normal person shouldn't pose much of a problem, but we are talking about Stan and Ollie here! There is some genuinely clever slapstick employed in this film, the highlights for me being the sight of Stan shovelling soot into Ollie's trousers, and Ollie sat in the fireplace with bricks falling around, and indeed on, him.

Naturally there is more to this film than just Chimney sweeping, as Professor Noodle is not exactly the sanest of people and has invented a "rejuvenation liquid", which he is keen to try out. He demonstrates this with a chicken, which reverts to a chick, and eventually an egg. Having watched this "incredible demonstration", Stan and Ollie decide that while nutty Noodle, is trying to find Jessop, his butler, they will try it out for themselves.

With the aid of a rather large fish, this is what they attempt to do, however in the process of reaching for an eyedropper, Stan knocks Ollie into the tank, along with the entire bottle of rejuvenation liquid. As a result of this Ollie rejuvenates back to well before he was evolved, in the form of a chimp!

The end shot of the chimp is reminiscent of those Tetley Tea ad's, yet around 60 years older. The shots of the chimp claiming "I have nothing to say", are among the funniest Laurel and Hardy moments ever. If you haven't already seen this film, I can highly recommend it.

This is one of the Laurel and Hardy that has been colourised, and would strongly recommend that you see the original black and white copy. My personal belief is that such classics do not need colour to make them better, as there is no way to improve on perfection.

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