Review of Angora Love

This was the last of many silent comedy shorts starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. If you're young at heart, I think you will enjoy it. There is the obvious situation comedy that the boys are 'forced' to keep an illicit animal in their hotel room, after it adopts them when Stan feeds it part of a doughnut. There is slapstick and sight gags scattered. Apparently, someone liked the basic plot, because it was repeated the next year in the talkie "Laughing Gravy", with a dog replacing the goat. Also, the basic plot that they are harboring an animal in their hotel room is again repeated in the 1932 "The Chimp"..........The film begins with a goat(Penelope) wandering away from it's apparent home in the small general store run by Charley Young. Why he keeps a goat in such a store is not explained. He calls a cop and claims someone stole the goat, also telling a boy to go look for it. The goat encounters the boys, and Stan unwisely feeds it. They try running a way, but that doesn't work. Ollie says that goats are bad luck. Just then, a boy encounters them and says that's the goat that was stolen from a store, and that he will go tell. So, they resign themselves to spending a night in a hotel, and somehow sneaking the goat in(We aren't shown this delicate operation). Once in, the goat occasionally makes a nuisance of itself, by eating the stuffing of a chair and the mattress. It pulls the cloth off the bureau, then pulls some loose wall paper off. Stan tries to fasten the wallpaper back with a tack and hammer, but Ollie stops him for fear of waking up the landlord, below their room. Both Ollie and Stan step on the tack. Then, Stan decides to use an stretch exercise strap set. In addition to arm stretching, he dances around, making noise that wakes up the landlord, who comes up to warn them. They hide the goat under the bed. ........Ollie says the goat smells. So, he suggests they give the goat a bath. This begins the last section of the film. They find a metal tub, way too small to fit the goat in. Nonetheless, they try. They have problems hitting the tub when they pour water in, and Ollie slips on the cake of soap, landing in the tub himself. The landlord appears again, after calling the police station, and Ollie, mad at Stan, throws the wash water at him, but hits the landlord. This begins a water fight between the 3, which eventually includes their neighbor Charlie Hall, who was also awakened. Eventually, a policeman shows up, sees the mess, but is more interested in the goat. He charges the landlord with stealing it, and takes him to the station. Just why the policeman picked on the landlord as the apparent thief, instead of the roomers, is not apparent. The boys think their goat problems are over, but then 3 tiny kids come out from under the bed.........See it at YouTube. Like the other silent L&H shorts, there is no colorized option.