This book contains exactly the sort of dry analysis that usually kills comedy, but Barr's love of his subject shows through enough to transcend his sense of faux symbolism. (Example: According to Barr, in Sons of the Desert, Stan's eating a wax apple represents him trying to eat from Eden's garden of knowledge but getting only a "dummy" knowledge since the apple is fake.) If you can get tolerate that collegiate kind of stuff, you'll be rewarded with lengthy and satisfying analyses of some of L&H's most wonderful comedies.
Barr gives very short shrift to L&H's post-Hal Roach work (deservedly so, but it makes for bad film history), and my personal peeve with the book is that he calls Helpmates "an irreducible masterpiece" and yet denies it the same sort of lengthy treatment he gives to an obscure number like Early to Bed. But if that's a complaint, it's only because Barr is so on-target about most of the movies he critiques, one wishes for more instead of less. Long out of print and hard to find, it's well worth the effort.
(C) 2006, Steven Bailey.
Related link:
Our site's interview with Charles Barr
