Wreckety Wrecks (1933)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Taxi Boys entry has Ben Blue and Billy Gilbert playing (of course) taxi drivers who think they've ran over a man and killed him. They're too stupid to realize they just hit a dummy so they try to find a place to hide the "body" and think they've found a cemetery but it's actually a seminary. The more non-L&H shorts I see from Hal Roach the more comfortable I become in saying that none of the "other" shorts ever came close to the legends. When I first read the plot to this thing I thought it sounded quite interested and it turned out to be a downright hilarious entry that had me laughing from start to finish. I think this is one example where the "other" guys managed to do something that even Laurel and Hardy would find funny. I thought Blue and Gilbert were perfect together and they really sold the aspect of how stupid they were. If you ever felt they were just acting then it would ruin the entire story but the actors make you believe they're this stupid and you can't help but laugh as they get into one mess after another while trying to get rid of this body, which isn't a body at all. One of the highlights in the film is when they try to bury the body only to then find that another body has taken its place. The film is 100% slapstick as the two are constantly running into obstacles that prevent them from getting the job done. This includes cops as well as a woman who was at the wreck when the dummy was first hit. There's even a funny bit at the start when a drunk gets all of this going because the dummy was actually his "friend". WRECKETY WRECKS is without question the best non-L&H short I've seen from Hal Roach.