TheRetroCritic

Released in 1932,  Pack Up Your Troubles was Laurel & Hardy's second feature film and it threw the clueless duo in the middle of WWI as they are sent to fight in the trenches despite them initially trying to dodge the draft. They are quickly found to be incompetent and are sent to work in the kitchens but they eventually redeem themselves by (accidentally, of course) capturing a whole bunch of enemies when they take over a tank and ride it out-of-control over the trenches. When one of their soldier buddies is killed in action, Stan and Ollie have a new mission: take care of his little girl until they can find her grandfather. Most Laurel & Hardy features tend to be just farce but this one has a bit more heart and is therefore more reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's films like The Kid or City Lights . There's something refreshing about seeing Stan and Ollie actually care about someone else and do everything they can, however clumsily, to see their good deed thro

Gene Wilder writes and directs The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother , a spoof comedy from 1975 starring Wilder himself as Sigerson Holmes, the iconic sleuth's lesser known younger brother, who is assigned to a case linked to Sherlock's arch-enemy Moriarty. Very much in the vein of Young Frankenstein , the film follows the goofier relative of a well known literary figure and a good old-fashioned farce ensues. Wilder reunites with slapstick legend Marty Feldman, a detective with a photographic memory who assists him, and their main lead is beautiful actress and compulsive liar Jenny Hill (a hilarious Madeline Kahn). The reliably great Dom DeLuise also appears near the end of the film as a shady opera singer with a cartoonish accent. The plot of the film pokes fun at the convoluted nature of Arthur Conan Doyle's novels and the clichés found in most Sherlock Holmes films but it's more of a loving homage than anything else. All the characters here are

Tom Hanks and Shelley Long star in The Money Pit , a Steven Spielberg-produced comedy from 1986. The film sees a couple get a good deal on a house before realising it's literally falling apart. Much like their relationship, the house is slowly but surely collapsing but it's also being renovated and while this metaphor isn't too subtle it completely works here. The plot may not sound all that appealing but the film itself is a lot of fun as the ridiculously precarious house leads to some genuinely funny slapstick moments. Highlights include a long stretch during which Hanks is literally stuck in-between floors, the hilarious sudden breakdown of what seemed like a perfectly usable kitchen, some paint-induced catastrophe on scaffolding and Hanks' priceless reaction to a bathtub bursting through down to another floor. The Money Pit does feel like an old-fashioned screwball comedy crossed with wacky antics the likes of Charlie Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy would have

Here's a movie which, on paper, couldn't have sounded like a good idea. Peter Sellers playing an Indian guy in a film where basically nothing in the way of a plot happens? Ok... Luckily, with Blake Edwards directing, Sellers' slapstick genius at its peak and that kitsch 60's charm in full force, The Party manages to not only recapture some of that Pink Panther magic but work completely as its own concept movie. The concept being that pretty much the entire film takes place during a party in one single location: a giant fancy Hollywood home complete with parrots, defective toilets, button-operated furniture, alcoholic waiters and many more things conveniently designed to give Peter Sellers' candid character plenty to trip on, fall into or mistakenly destroy. Hrundi V. Bakshi (Sellers) is a bumbling film extra who accidentally explodes a set he's working on and is soon told he'll never work in Hollywood again. Through a clerical error, however, in