"The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in 'For Love or Mummy" is both awful and amazing. The amazing part is how close Gailard Sartain and Bronson Pinchot recreate Laurel & Hardy. In particular, Sartain is spot on as Hardy...but you also must admire Pinchot's acting, which is way better than what he showed us in "Perfect Strangers". The problem with the movie is pretty much everything else...the writing, the supporting cast, the decision to place the pair in the present day, as well as making this a full-length film instead of a comedy short (and generally Laurel & Hardy's best work was in their short films).
The story finds the pair placed into what seems like a re-working of "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy"...with a bit of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (with the missing artifact angle...and the boys being blamed for it). This is a serious miscalculation, as this sort of thing isn't at all like ANY Laurel & Hardy film...but it worked well with Abbott and Costello. Perhaps they should have just made this an Abbott and Costello tribute film. Seeing Hardy and Laurel being chased by a mummy and dealing with the baddie with mystical powers all just seemed wrong-headed and forced. Additionally, filming in modern day South Africa....well, that's WAY beyond wrong-headed and forced!
So how could this film have worked? Well, by making it look EXACTLY like a Laurel & Hardy short for a start. Filming in black & white might have been nice and setting it back in the late 1920s or 1930s would have really worked nicely. Instead, seeing the pair in 1930s Laurel & Hardy garb in modern times with such an unconventional plot was jarring and weird....and not in a good way.
The story finds the pair placed into what seems like a re-working of "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy"...with a bit of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (with the missing artifact angle...and the boys being blamed for it). This is a serious miscalculation, as this sort of thing isn't at all like ANY Laurel & Hardy film...but it worked well with Abbott and Costello. Perhaps they should have just made this an Abbott and Costello tribute film. Seeing Hardy and Laurel being chased by a mummy and dealing with the baddie with mystical powers all just seemed wrong-headed and forced. Additionally, filming in modern day South Africa....well, that's WAY beyond wrong-headed and forced!
So how could this film have worked? Well, by making it look EXACTLY like a Laurel & Hardy short for a start. Filming in black & white might have been nice and setting it back in the late 1920s or 1930s would have really worked nicely. Instead, seeing the pair in 1930s Laurel & Hardy garb in modern times with such an unconventional plot was jarring and weird....and not in a good way.