User Reviews

In case you don't know it, Stan Laurel had a film career before being teamed with Oliver Hardy. Stan starred in or co-starred in many shorts during the late teens and 1920s. The quality of the lot varied considerably. However, despite a few really good films here and there, the bulk of the films are, at best, average and not even close to the quality of the premier comedians of the day. Considering I am one of the biggest Laurel and Hardy fans (having reviewed just about all their films--even the foreign language ones I could get hold of), my seeing Laurel as a less than stellar solo act should carry some merit, as I really WANTED to enjoy these movies more.

This film is set in a small Irish town and mostly concerns James Finlayson's attempts to marry a young lady against her will. Nice guy, Stan Laurel, tries to help out but gets thrown in jail for his trouble. What happens next you'll just need to see for yourself.

NEAR DUBLIN is a film that might just set your blood pressure off due to its treatment of the Irish. In this film, they are all violent jerks--just itching to fight. In fact, at one point in the film, there's a dance and EVERYONE has brought along a supply of bricks to throw once the expected fights begin! This is certainly NOT a politically correct film nor is it subtle. Its low-brow humor might just make you cringe, in fact. However, despite this, the film is actually rather funny in a Three Stooges sort of way. You laugh but later feel a bit ashamed for having done so!

Revised November 27, 2005

I would like to thank John Achorn who dropped me a note pointing out there were two versions of this short available, an eight-minute cut-down on which I based my original review, and a twenty-minute version recently reissued on DVD by Kino and Lobster. My original review read:

"Once again, the principal joke here is that everyone tries to beat each other to death. This time they use bricks from Fin's brickyard. Back in 1913, Sennet and his Keystone crew had known that a little more was needed for a comedy; that Hal Roach could countenance this sort of production, even in a one-reeler in 1923 is shocking.

"However, as it is likely that taking this sort of mess was part of the price for the brilliantly timed comedy features of Harold Lloyd and the sentimental "Our Gang" comedies that Bob McGowan was directing, it provided an invaluable opportunity for Laurel, Fin and H.M. Walker to be bad and get it out of their systems. There's no reason, however, for you to suffer through this."

And I do urge you to avoid the cut-down. The twenty-minute version has a fuller story and more variation, but still remains violent and largely uninteresting except for the pleasure of looking at leading lady Ena Gregory. She was a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1925, but her career fizzled out, unlike others. Still, neither she nor the poorly organized gags were enough to keep me interested. At this stage in his career, Stan's best works were burlesques like THE SOILERS and ROUGHEST Africa that gave his works a better structure. It would still be a couple of years before he discovered the character of Mr. Laurel that would permit his abilities as a gag constructor to reach their fullest flower. Avoid this unless you have a mania for completism.

A look at both versions might be instructive, showing how the people who did the editing had lost the basics of editing silent comedy. But surely you have better ways of spending a half hour.