Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

bkoganbing For the only time in their joint careers as a comic team, Stan Laurel slips out of character and into another guise. That's an integral part of A Chump At Oxford where the boys get a chance at the best kind of college education.No doubt that Hal Roach got the idea for this film from the highly successful MGM film A Yank At Oxford where Robert Taylor was an American fish out of the water across the pond. Of course Taylor was there on a rowing scholarship, what brought Stan and Ollie there was something quite different.On the jacket cover of my VHS copy of A Chump At Oxford, Hal Roach had a featurette film of about 40 minutes and decided to add on those extra 25 minutes at the beginning where Stan and Ollie are first serving as butler and maid as temporary help at a society bash. I did say maid because that was what the job required. It was Ollie's bright idea to put Stan in drag as a maid to get the job. Well, it worked for Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. Anyway the highlight of that part of the film is Stan merely following orders to the letter and serving the salad undressed. It was an interesting end to that little bash.Their next job is as street cleaners and while sitting down just having their lunch in the doorway of a bank, they foil a bank robbery and in gratitude the bank president asks them what they want. Since right before the two had concluded their lack of education has held them back, they ask for an education.The bank president must have been David Rockefeller because he buys them an Oxford education. That's where Stan discovers that he's really Lord Paddington who got hit on the head several years ago and lost his memory. It turns out that Stan was the greatest scholar and athlete Oxford ever produced. And for a while Ollie is completely frazzled at the prospect of becoming Stan's lackey.Stan does go into an entirely different character than the sweet innocent we all know and love. Because of that A Chump At Oxford ranks among the best of their feature films. Ollie contributes his share as well, we've never seen Ollie before or since flumoxed the way he is in this film. A must for Laurel and Hardy fans.

Spikeopath This is Stan Laurel's show all the way, sure enough Ollie plays his part, but in this double package it's the genius of Laurel that comes to the fore. The double package in question is the now widely available European release of this film, the first 20 minutes sees the boys making their way to an employment agency where they jump at the chance of a job as maid and butler to the Vandevere family. Yes, this sees Stan dress up as a woman {Agnes} with hilarious results, not only does he buffoon his way thru serving dinner, he gets drunk into the bargain as well !. After being chased off the property by Mr Vandevere, the guys end up road sweeping and whilst taking a break they inadvertently foil a bank robbery and as a reward they get to fulfil their wish of a better education.This sends the guys to England and a place at Oxford, the fun starts straight away as they are dressed for Eton !, upon seeing that these two are candidates for pranks being played on them, some of their fellow students send them into a big maze on the bluff that it's the way to the Deans office. This sets us up for a number of great sequences, most notably a brilliant set of events that sees Stan with three hands, from here we see the boys set up {as a prank} in the Deans own quarters and this of course causes much mirth when the Dean shows up to find the guys boozing away in his bedroom. Roll onto Stan banging his head and suddenly being transformed into an aristocrat called Lord Paddington and you just know that Laurel is getting a pure mania role to get his teeth into, the results are excellent, especially as Stan gets to boss Ollie around.One of the best films the boys ever did in my honest opinion, 9/10.

theowinthrop As mentioned earlier except for BLOCK-HEADS most aficionados might consider A CHUMP AT OXFORD to be the final great Laurel & Hardy feature length comedy. It's main weakness is it's structure - BLOCK-HEADS is a series of disasters rising to a crescendo from Stan to Ollie to everyone around them. A CHUMP is really two or three shorts (all very funny) that are united by the thinnest of plot threads. In fact it can be split into three shorts without difficulty.First there is the repeat of the story from FROM SOUP TO NUTS (then a long forgotten silent short they made in 1928), where they are hired to serve a dinner at Jimmy Finleyson's home one evening and destroy the dinner. The high point is when Stan is told to serve the salad undressed and does so - of course too literally for Finleyson's taste. He chases the two of them out with a rifle (shades of Billy Gilbert in PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES and BLOCK-HEADS). Finn fires his rifle, and then an angry policeman shows up warning him to be careful or he will go to jail - "You could have blown somebody's brains out!" Unfortunately, the policemen turns around and we see that Finn shot a big hole into the cop's pants.Next we see the boys at a new job as street cleaners, and Hardy launches into one of those semi-sensible speeches he gives, "Well we've reached bottom now!...What's wrong with us?" Ollie figures it's a lack of education (partly it is - though it's hard to see how Stan could comprehend any book). They foil a bank robbery (the bank is called the FINLEYSON NATIONAL, which sounds reasonable as Finn was a canny Scotsman usually). As a reward they get their wish - they get the finest education possible at Oxford.The final segment is when they reach Oxford and fall victims to a series of pranks played by the students (led by Peter Cushing - far from his future as Dr. Frankenstein - and Charlie Hall). The best part of this is the business of the boys getting lost (even from each other) in the maze at Oxford, where Ollie is carrying their trunk on his back, and yelling for Stan, who is yelling back, just around the corner! There is also the student dressed as the bogeyman and sitting between Stan and Ollie on the trunk. There is also the boys settling into their rooms (actually the rooms of the Dean of Oxford, Wilfred Lucas), ending with them shooting soda water into what they think is the face of an old goat in a portrait, and end up hitting the original face (Lucas, of course). A battle of the expelled students (the Dean catches them trying to leave his rooms) and the boys ("dirty rotten snitches" Cushing and Hall call them) completes this segment - but introduces us to the biggest change in the history of Laurel & Hardy: Stan's revelation of his "real" personality. A tremendously creative and brilliant comic genius, Stan Laurel (when busy constructing his films) was all serious business - like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Fields, the Marxes, and Lou Costello, his peers. In this mode he was not the nincompoop he played opposite Hardy. He was very serious and intelligent sounding. This is his persona, with a degree of haughtiness, when playing his alter ego, Lord Paddington. Paddington was Oxford's greatest scholar and athlete. He proves the latter by throwing Cushing and the others (unfortunately including Hardy and Lucas) out his window one after another. He also demonstrates his brilliance quickly (all these awards and trophies are on display shortly after his restoration - and worse when his new butler, Ollie, is overwhelmed hearing that Einstein is coming to discuss a problem about the relativity theory that Paddington can settle!). Stan never tried this revelation again - and probably wisely. Stan and Ollie (to work) needs Ollie to be a bit more with it in terms of what the world expects - Stan follows, and upsets the easily toppled Ollie. It is similar to their silent film short, EARLY TO BED, where Ollie becomes a wealthy man about town, tormenting his butler Stan - we don't like this Ollie that much, and approve when Stan starts smashing Ollie's brick-a-bra-ck. The "Paddington" bit was better than the man-about-town Ollie in the earlier film. Wisely, Paddington leaves before the film ends, and Stan returns. We are glad to have him back.

sandra small In A Chump at Oxford the duo dream of gaining a good education as a means to escape from the string of dead end, boring jobs by which they have been consistently exploited for a measly pay cheque which no doubt gives them just enough money to 'get by' on.Having only enough money to get by on means that the duo are denied the best education. Then by chance the duo inadvertently foil a bank robbery and are duly rewarded with that elitist education they were dreaming of, but otherwise couldn't afford from a grateful bank president.For the duo to obtain this elitist education the grateful bank president sends them to Oxford University in England which is then exposed for its upper class haughtiness via Laural and Hardy's enrolment at this ancient medieval institute of higher education, which has been dominated for centuries by upper class nitwits who think an elitist education here is their right alone, because they have the correct breeding.This means that those people such as Laural and Hardy are viewed by the traditional Oxford student with disdain, because they are among the common 'new rich' who have no breeding, and who have merely bought their way to Oxford with so called 'new money' which is viewed by them as vulgar. So, the traditional elitist students' endeavour to evict the common pair that is Laural and Hardy from Oxford by way of student pranks, which are in fact a form of bullying . However, it is because Laurel and Hardy may well have the brains, - but lack the education - that they actually win through by seeing how institutes of learning, such as Oxford University are ensuring that higher education remains in the hands of the ancient upper classes, and escape it by heading back to the USA!