AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

mark.waltz A tangled web is what Laurel and Hardy end up in when they try to deceive their wives while getting ready for a trip to Atlantic City to go to their lodge instead. Left alone (with Hardy pretending to be sick), the two wrestle over Oliver ending up in Laurel's boots, and their desperate attempts to get them off. Between a boot jack, a badly places tack, a Murphy bed and a floor level bathtub, the boys will get their share of abused especially when the wives come home. It's a plot device they tried several times with different scenarios, most famously in "Sons of the Desert", a feature. This one, in abbreviated mode, is practically just as good.

bkoganbing This particular Hal Roach short with Laurel and Hardy seems to have worked so well that the idea was later expanded into their classic Sons Of The Desert comedy.Stan and Ollie are a couple of henpecked husbands who have planned to take a joint vacation to Atlantic City with the wives. But then Ollie gets a call from a hunt club that he and Stan belong to and it seems as though the gang is throwing them a bash. And since this is a guys only type gathering, they have to ditch the wives. Ollie fakes a tremendous headache in the usual overactive Ollie fashion and the wives decide to make it a girls only trip to Atlantic City. With the ruse working, Ollie and Stan have to get into their hunting outfits.Personally I find it hard to believe that some hoity toity outfit would even have Laurel and Hardy as members let alone as honored guests at a party. But leaving that aside, most of the film from this point on is taken up with Hardy having managed to squeeze into Laurel's boots by mistake now trying to get them off his feet with Laurel's inept assistance. I've never seen one gag milked so successfully for a film, granted it's just a short subject. Seeing poor Laurel struggling to get those boots off Hardy's feet, dragging him around the apartment and wrecking half of it is hilarious.Who could have known that in reality the title Be Big referred to Ollie's feet.

andy blundell Up until a few years ago I had disliked Laurel and Hardy, until my wife, who is a fan forced me to watch some of their better movies, for example Way out West and Sons of the Desert.Watching this particular effort, however, reminded me of why I had disliked them so much in the first place.It starts out brightly enough with the boys trying to pull the wool over their wives' eyes in order to go to a stag party in their honour but then it loses it's way. The centrepiece is an over-extended sequence where Ollie is trying to remove a boot. After ten minutes of this I was heartily wishing it hadn't got stuck as well For dedicated fans only

The_Movie_Cat Not the finest moment for the duo, particularly on a technical level. The direction and editing are all over the place (often using long shots for reactions) and even in the newly restored version the sound quality is muddy.Basic plot seems to read as a try-out for Sons of the Desert, with Stan and Ollie duping their wives so they can go to a stag party. Though in the case of this short they never quite make it there. Most of the slapstick sequences feel oddly laboured and contrived (Ollie at one point taking over twelve minutes trying to get a boot off), not least because they're all backed up by an overstated musical score.I've got a new theory: the funniness of Laurel and Hardy is directly proportional to the length of Stan's hair. In the amusing Chickens Come Home-, made the same year, he sports a large quiff, yet here it's just medium length and not as extreme.Not awful, but Be Big! feels more like a formula filler rather than any great step forward in their career.