One of the great classics of my childhood is March of the Wooden Soldiers, the 1934
Laurel and Hardy comedy fantasy based on the musical Babes in Toyland. When I was growing up it was on TV every year
either on Thanksgiving or sometime shortly thereafter. It marked the beginning
of the Christmas season and I waited for and looked forward to it every year.
It’s not a great movie. Heck, it’s not even a great comedy, not even by Laurel
and Hardy standards. But there’s something so magical in the story that so
easily captures the imaginations of children.
This year, probably as a way of drumming up personal
nostalgia, I showed it to my four-year old son on Thanksgiving. The streaming
rental was good for a week and he asked to watch it several more times. I
bought him the DVD for Christmas and he’s already watched it a few times. The
DVD has both the original black-and-white and the later colorized version. I
made it clear that in my house there will be no viewing of colorized films.
Some reviews claim the colorization is an improvement because children get to
see the full vibrancy of the images and not the simplicity of grayscale. Sorry,
but I have no memory of watching the film as a kid and thinking, “I love this
movie, but where’s the color?” My son has never once even mentioned the film’s
lack of color. The imagination fills it in. And even if it doesn’t, it’s the
fantasy that captures the attention and tickles the mind, not just the images.
At some point my review should touch on the story, I
suppose, and I should talk about how Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play Stannie
Dee and Ollie Dum, two children of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Little Bo
Peep is one of their sisters and they all live in Toyland, a strange place
populated by Mother Goose nursery rhyme characters. Look around and you’ll spot
a cat (but no fiddle), a mouse without a clock to run up, a baby in a crib in a
treetop (a little creepy actually), and others. The villain is Silas Barnaby
(Henry Brandon), a miser of a landlord who will toss mother and he children
from the shoe if they can’t meet the next payment. Barnaby will accept as
payment marriage to Bo Peep, who is already engaged to Tom Tom the Piper’s Son.
Barnaby frames Tom Tom for the murder of one of the three
little pigs (there’s a little Disney crossover in that trio with the playing of
the theme from the famous animated short) and Old King Cole banishes him to
Bogeyland, a dark series of caves inhabited by the man-eating bogeymen. The big
climax is where the film takes its title from as the bogeymen invade Toyland
and Stannie and Ollie switch on their one hundred 6-foot tall wooden soldiers
they made accidentally. The soldiers scare off the Bogeymen and Barnaby with
them and everyone lives happily ever after.
Last year I thought the bogeymen would be too scary for
my son, who was frightened by Monsters,
Inc. before that. But he thought the whole thing was quite funny, including
the bogeymen, whom I think look a little intimidating for a small child.
The movie is often considered a musical. It has a couple
of songs all performed by classically trained singers who sound like operatic
soloists. It was so nice to see swingers who employ effective technique and
sound good. But the story isn’t guided by songs. It’s the fantasyland that is
the star as well as the often hysterical antics of the great comedy duo.
Directors Gus Meins and Charley Rogers worked primarily in short comedies at
the time. Truthfully, March of the Wooden
Soldiers is a bit uneven and slows down for song in a strange attempt, I
suppose, to maintain its ties to the source material. It might have been better
if screenwriters Nick Grinde and Frank Butler had focused more on the comedy
duo and drummed up some of the laughs.
On a technical
level, March of the Wooden Soldiers
is pretty basic. It’s pretty low-budget so the sets are minimal even by the
standards of the 1930s. The sound quality was somewhat improved for the DVD restoration,
but some of the song lyrics remain muddled and indiscernible. However, if we
consider this as a nostalgia piece or something to enthrall the kids for ninety
minutes, it perfectly nails it.
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