Rating: 
Summary: Vintage Laurel and Hardy
Review: "The Flying Deuces" (1939) was the only non-Hal Roach production in which Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy maintained a fair amount of creative control -- a quality largely absent from most of their 1941-45 output. After leaving Roach in 1940, the team's brilliance was tarnished by Fox and MGM's assembly-line approach to visual comedy. It's a shame that independent producer Boris Morros and RKO didn't retain Stan and Ollie's services after the success of "The Flying Deuces," which is a minor classic in their filmography. Though lacking the high production values of the best Roach features, this Foreign Legion escapade remains a fast-paced romp with plenty of memorable routines and some charming musical interludes. Because of its public-domain status, "The Flying Deuces" is the most accessible Laurel and Hardy feature. As a result, there are numerous video releases that utilize re-edited, badly duped prints. The recent Alpha Video DVD is far from pristine, yet it offers the complete 69-minute feature. For once, the print quality is better than average while the soundtrack is fully synchronized. When you consider the plethora of budget DVDs on the market, the Alpha disc is among the better offerings. Hopefully, a first-generation 35mm print of "The Flying Deuces" will emerge on DVD in this lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Laurel & Hardy join the French Foreign Legion for fun
Review: "The Flying Deuces" gets its name from the final sequence where Laurel & Hardy escape from a firing squad in an airplane. The boys get in this predicament because Ollie is jilted by his girl friend (Jean Parker) and wants to commit suicide. Despite Stan's more than willing help the attempt fails and the boys end up joining the French Foreign Legion instead. Needless to say, Stan and Ollie are not very good soldiers, hence the appointment with the firing squad. The comedy routines in the film are okay, but there is nothing special. The best moments are the more musical ones, especially a nice soft-shoe routine and Stan playing a prison bedspring like a harp. This 1939 seven-reeler was directed by Edward Sutehrland for RKO and co-stars Charles Middleton, james Finlayson, Reginald Gardiner, Jean Del Val and Clem Wilenchick. One of the writers receiving screenplay credit for "The Flying Deuces" was Harry Langdon, the great silent comic who was just a notch below the celebrated triumvirate of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Laurel and Hardy
Review: "The Flying Deuces" (1939) was the only non-Hal Roach production in which Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy maintained a fair amount of creative control -- a quality largely absent from most of their 1941-45 output. After leaving Roach in 1940, the team's brilliance was tarnished by Fox and MGM's assembly-line approach to visual comedy. It's a shame that independent producer Boris Morros and RKO didn't retain Stan and Ollie's services after the success of "The Flying Deuces," which is a minor classic in their filmography. Though lacking the high production values of the best Roach features, this Foreign Legion escapade remains a fast-paced romp with plenty of memorable routines and some charming musical interludes. Because of its public-domain status, "The Flying Deuces" is the most accessible Laurel and Hardy feature. As a result, there are numerous video releases that utilize re-edited, badly duped prints. The recent Alpha Video DVD is far from pristine, yet it offers the complete 69-minute feature. For once, the print quality is better than average while the soundtrack is fully synchronized. When you consider the plethora of budget DVDs on the market, the Alpha disc is among the better offerings. Hopefully, a first-generation 35mm print of "The Flying Deuces" will emerge on DVD in this lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Laurel & Hardy join the French Foreign Legion for fun
Review: "The Flying Deuces" gets its name from the final sequence where Laurel & Hardy escape from a firing squad in an airplane. The boys get in this predicament because Ollie is jilted by his girl friend (Jean Parker) and wants to commit suicide. Despite Stan's more than willing help the attempt fails and the boys end up joining the French Foreign Legion instead. Needless to say, Stan and Ollie are not very good soldiers, hence the appointment with the firing squad. The comedy routines in the film are okay, but there is nothing special. The best moments are the more musical ones, especially a nice soft-shoe routine and Stan playing a prison bedspring like a harp. This 1939 seven-reeler was directed by Edward Sutehrland for RKO and co-stars Charles Middleton, james Finlayson, Reginald Gardiner, Jean Del Val and Clem Wilenchick. One of the writers receiving screenplay credit for "The Flying Deuces" was Harry Langdon, the great silent comic who was just a notch below the celebrated triumvirate of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd.
Rating:
Summary: This is THE only "Flying Deuces" to own!
Review: "The Flying Dueces" has always gotten a bit of a short shrift over the years from critics and fans alike but I have always thought it deserved better praise than it has gotten.
And finally KINO has released the best print of this movie I think I've ever seen to date.The French company Lobster films from whose archives this release comes from (and many other titles from Kino;check out their 'Slapstick Emporium' series!) obtained a very good 35mm negative in Europe and through some remastering in picture and sound have released this picture as close to its' original look as I think any of us has seen since its' debut in /39.The sound is improved and the contrast has been totally restored.It is not the washed out thing we've been used to seeing ad nauseum on release after wretched release on video and DVD here in North America.
Also included with this is a couple of short reels of their English /32 trip,the "This is Your Life" show from /54,The "Stolen Jools" from /31 and "Tree in a Test Tube" from /45.All this material is from better than average to good prints.I thought they could have done alot more with them considering the technology now but they are at least better than I have seen any of them previously.
Also included is a brief statement about "Flying Deuces" from the president and co-founder of Lobster films.And the original French trailer and various pictures of the North American and European posters for it.
In conclusion I recommend this DVD very highly.It has alot of extras but the main attraction hands down is the print itself.A revelation.
Rating: 
Summary: Laurel and Hardy at their most bleakly Beckettian.
Review: 'The Flying Deuces' plumbs depths of despair that almost reach the tragic pitch of a Buster Keaton. From the opening sequence, where a lovestruck Ollie has his marriage proposal turned down by a French waitress who laughs at him with her friends behind his back, the comedy is soured by very real pain. The rest of the film sees the pair trying to drown Ollie's sorrows, so, appropriately, images of water humorously recur. This is especially ironic in that the action's bulk is set in the Moroccan desert, with Laurel and Hardy joining the Foreign Legion, only for the duration needed, they think, for Ollie to 'forget'. Perhaps the desert suggests the emotional barrenness searing Ollie's soul; perhaps the film is merely having a laugh at the contemporary FL hit 'Beau Geste'. In support of the former conjecture is the film's best sequence, which takes place just before they leave for Africa. Stan flippantly asks his miserable friend why he doesn't just drown himself. Ollie takes him up on the idea, but insists Stan join him - how could he live without his old comrade, people staring at him without Ollie there to 'explain'. The business with the Sisyphean rock-weight to which they are both tied; the intrusions of an escaped monster-shark; the discussions about reincarnation (Ollie wants to come back as a horse); and the prolonged leavetaking, all make it difficult to tell where comedy ends and tragedy begins. The film is full of brilliantly resonant sequences and images like this, such as the laundry episode, Stan wandering through an endless vineyard of clotheslines, and ending up on a mountian full of dirty linen; or the boys trying to rest only to be barked at by guards who are precursors to Beckett's malevolently unseen authorities. The gloriously inappropriate musical interludes, such as a choreographed 'Shine On Harvest Moon' at the height of a chase sequence, includes Stan playing harp on the eve of their execution for desertion, the instrument ominously looking like a gallows with numerous 'strings'/nooses. It's a shame the humour isn't up to the ideas (the script was co-written by Harry Langdon) - the sparse funny moments bejewel long stretches of tedium, and the film climaxes with an interminable action sequence that is neither exciting nor witty. Worse, the print's quality, even on supposedly 'restored' DVD, is atrocious and presumably irredeemable, full of scratches, black-outs and missing shots - anything longer than a mid-shot is an impenetrable blur. Yet even this flaw can add inadvertant eerieness to the film - when the boys are arrested, their faces disappear against the desert bleach, like a strange surrealist tableau, or a James Whale fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff from the boys
Review: Actually, I would rate this as a 4 star film, but I'm yet to find a copy of it without some major flaws in the print quality. So I figure, if you take a 4 star film, with 2 star picture quality, you get a 3 star film. This is probably the only non Hal Roach film that L&H did that comes close to the standards they set so many years earlier. Actually, this film is better than some of the weaker Roach efforts. (Swiss Miss comes to mind) It's fast paced, has a good staple of classic L&H supporting actors, and is sure to be lots of fun if you're a fan of the boys.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: Another downright funny Stan Laurel-Oliver Hardy classic that will keep you laughing so hard you'll barely be able to watch the show. Ollie, heartbroken, drags Stan with him to the French Foreign Legion, where it quickly becomes clear that they weren't meant to be soldiers. Hardy ends up making a horse of himself. Funny scene: the boys try to fly an airplane (with predictable results).
Rating:
Summary: A COLLECTOR'S ITEM
Review: Apparently when this film was being made,L&H were both battling serious illnesses.It shows in the film itself.Stan is very thin and sick looking.He looks to be in no condition to make a movie.Oliver is heavier than ever.Three hundred pounds overweight.They both gave me the willies at first glance.However,this being their final film kind of makes it a collector's item for me.I hadn't realised they had been around as long as from the roaring 20s until 1950.Amazing!Another thing that never seems to be mentioned,is the storyline's remarkable simularity to Gilligan's Island.
Rating:
Summary: Say, Ollie, where did you go?
Review: Crazy comedy! A sad ending, though ludicrous. Ollie is rejected in love and goes off to......... you guessed it, the French Foreign Legion! And the Legion is never the same! Laurel and Hardy go through the ups and downs of a soldier's life,ending in a spectacular plane flight over the desert sands! Don't miss it! WASSSAMAAAAATTUHHHH!
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