Block-Heads (1938)
★★★ — Block-Heads (1938)
Block-Heads arrived during what many considered the twilight of Laurel and Hardy's golden run at the Hal Roach Studios, released the same year the pair's contract with Roach was beginning to fray. Director John G. Blystone was a reliable studio hand (he'd worked with Buster Keaton and Will Rogers in earlier decades) rather than an auteur, and the film carries that efficiently assembled quality. The premise, a soldier obliviously continuing to guard his post twenty years after the Armistice, has an appealing absurdist logic to it, and the production came at a moment when the duo's short-film era was fully behind them and the pressure to sustain feature-length comedy was very much on. Clocking in at under an hour, it sits somewhere between the two formats.
Block-Heads (1938) is a charming, if slightly uneven, late-career Laurel and Hardy film that holds up surprisingly well for a film pushing 90 years old. Freed from the constraints of silent cinema but still rooted in physical comedy, the duo delivers their trademark blend of bumbling innocence and escalating chaos. Stan Laurel plays a shell-shocked WWI veteran who’s been living in the trenches for two decades, unaware the war ended, yes, it’s absurd, but that’s the charm. Oliver Hardy, as ever, is the exasperated man trying (and failing) to reintegrate him into civilian life. The gags are hit-or-miss by modern standards: some land with timeless silliness, while others feel dated or stretched too thin. There’s nothing here as iconic as their earlier work, but there’s still genuine warmth in their chemistry and a gentle, nostalgic rhythm to the pacing. It’s not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it’s consistently pleasant, clever in spots, and a testament to how much joy these two could wring from simple misunderstandings. Not essential, but far from forgotten. A solid, sweet-natured relic that proves even “just ok” Laurel and Hardy is better than most comedies today.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1938 | Watched: 2026-03-07
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from John G. Blystone: Our Hospitality (1923)
More with Stan Laurel: Sons of the Desert (1933) · The Music Box (1932)
More from the 1930s: Earth (1930) · Monkey Business (1931) · Sabotage (1936) · People on Sunday (1930)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More war: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · The General (1926) · Men Without Wings (1946) · Fires Were Started (1943)
