A Masterpiece!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Over the past year or two I've been making an effort to see as many Academy Award-nominated titles as possible. The latest is Laurel & Hardy's "Tit for Tat", a sequel to "Them Thar Hills". In this case, they've opened an electrical repair shop next door to the husband and wife whom they antagonized in the previous outing, and a misunderstanding causes back-and-forth revenge. Stan and Ollie do their usual stuff, unaware that there's a shoplifter about.It's so simple but so hilarious. Just goes to show why L&H were probably the greatest comedy duo ever.

This short was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short (Comedy), losing to Robert Benchley's How To Sleep. There will be spoilers ahead:This short is a sequel to Them Thar Hills but can be watched without having seen that one. The short begins with Stan and Ollie opening an electronics store. This turns out to be an unwise move, because they are clearly not businessmen. There's a nice bit involving the beat cop and Stan creating a bit of friction there.There's a grocer next door and the two go over to introduce themselves, not knowing that they'd already met them on vacation and that meeting did not go well. Neither does this one. It will get much worse.Our heroes go back to their store and the running gag starts with a very persistent shoplifter who says "How d'ya do" as he robs them blind. Ollie decides to put more light-bulbs in their signage and winds up getting stuck outside the upstairs apartment over the grocer's and he comes down the steps with the grocer's wife, which burns up the grocer even more.Thus begins a "war" of sorts, with the grocer and the boys basically destroying each other's stores, escalating each round until the beat cop finally forces a settlement. The boys return to their store-an empty storefront, because their shoplifter has backed up a truck and loaded everything up quite thoroughly. Out of business on the day you opened.This short can be found on the Laurel and Hardy: The Essential Collection and is well worth getting. The collection is wonderful and so is the short. Recommended.

Tit for Tat concerns Laurel and Hardy as entrepreneurs, opening an electrical goods store in a strip mall next door to another shop owner (Charlie Hall), who is weary of their behavior after seeing Hardy with his wife (Mae Busch). In response, the shop owner triggers a fight with them by breaking items in their store, which prompts Laurel and Hardy to conduct "eye-for-an-eye" treatment on the man by destroying his shop, a small little grocery outlet. In the mix of senseless fighting, a shoplifter (Bobby Dunn) repeatedly enters Laurel and Hardy's shop, taking more and more items each time, rendering the entire situation increasingly maddening for all parties.While Tit for Tat is a sequel to the Laurel and Hardy short Them Thar Hills (unseen by me), it almost plays like a remake of Big Business (from 1929) in style, where Laurel and Hardy were feuding with the next door neighbor, taking turns demolishing each other's homes. While I have been critical of the more slapstick-infused shorts of Laurel and Hardy, these types of "eye for an eye" shorts work largely because they are competitions between the characters for how far they want to take their situational humor. In addition, it's also a pleasure to see how wise the characters can be under the circumstances of revenge while simultaneously remaining so dumb and foolish throughout the entire time. There's a great amount of pleasure that comes in watching Laurel and Hardy compete for superiority when the prize is nothing more than another crack in their fragile dignity.Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charlie Hall, Mae Busch, and Bobby Dunn. Directed by: Charles Rogers.

Revisitng Laurel and Hardy's films it's surprising to see that the practice of slipping in a few adult references for the grown-ups wasn't the idea of the makers of full-length 90s cartoon films. As other reviewers have mentioned, Ollie's comment to Mae Busch, the wife of the diminutive neighbouring shopkeeper with whom he is embroiled in the 'tit for tat' feud of the title, is clearly a deliberate double-entendre that somehow slipped by the censors as, no doubt, it would have any watching children. There's a similar sight gag in County Hospital that is quite subtle by comparison but no doubt just as deliberate.Anyway, this one's pretty good. It's a sequel to the previous year's Them Thar Hills which introduced us to the memorable song lyric Pom Pom and it probably just shades that one for laughs. The boys were at the top of their game in the mid-thirties thanks to sharp, well-paced shorts like these and some of the touches here are truly first-class.