The beginning of Laurel and Hardy's long line of feature films after they and Hal Roach reluctantly stopped making their wonderful short films (Their final short THICKER THAN WATER was made around the same time as this),"Bonnie Scotland" is an oddly contradictory,desultory work in which they start as the principal characters but seemingly end up as providing comic relief to the frankly dreary and hackneyed plot,particularly in the second half.

It all starts off amusingly enough,with Stan and Ollie (stowaway convicts from the US,with only a week to serve of their sentences) visiting a Scottish village to see what inheritance Stan will receive after a relative passes away (he assumes the name Sandy MacLaurel!);it turns out to be merely a set of bagpipes and a snuff box.The material here is very funny and well up to standard,with the undoubted highlight being some business with the snuff box resulting in Ollie sneezing an entire river of all it's watery contents (which even by 21st Century expectations,is technically very adroit),and some almost as equally good sequences involving the reading of the will,their residing in a local guest house,and a ingeniously improvised way of cooking a fish in their room.The depiction of the Scottish village is rather endearing and charming,the set being apparently borrowed from a production the previous year,THE LITTLE MINISTER.

After such encouraging preliminaries,the film takes a decided turn for the worst when the story travels to India.The scenes in Scotland had only featured the stolid love story section of the plot (built around William Janney and June Lang) only sporadically;it thankfully concentrated more on Laurel and Hardy.When it reverts to India (itself a rather unnecessary continuance to bring into the film),this unfortunately is brought to more prominence and leads to much dialogue,situations and characters which are unfortunately played in a straight,humourless manner.The tedium is made more resistible by the unappealing,maudlin,milksop-type character that Janney has to play,making it more baffling how Ms Lang would find anything attractive in such a person.Production values also take a nosedive from this point on;after a fairly convincing representation of a Scottish village,India is portrayed somewhat artificially by several unremarkable matte shots and a desert fort that comes across as more Californian than anything else.It is always welcome to see James Finlayson alongside Laurel and Hardy,and he has some amusing moments,as does the all too-briefly seen Daphne Pollard.But they and Stan and Ollie themselves come close to being totally sunk by the stiff,colourless actors surrounding them,not to mention the hopelessly banal storyline.

Their scenes here seem to be tagged on merely arbitrarily and having no real relevance to the story,but at least they are still funny;several familiar encounters with Fin;a 'mirage' accordion sequence,and a delightful impromptu dance to the tune '100 Pipers' playing in the background,with similarities to a slightly better hybrid in their classic short THE MUSIC BOX (1932).

As it is,"Bonnie Scotland" is mostly enjoyable but often afflicted by it's fractured plotting and script.Their best features (SONS OF THE DESERT,WAY OUT WEST,BLOCKHEADS,OUR RELATIONS) were those that built a story round them and was not hindered by straight or romantic sub-plots or other irrelevancies.Had "Bonnie Scotland" not fallen into this trap,it may have been one of their better full-length vehicles.One can only regret the presence of such dispensable elements which undermined their peerless comic partnership.

RATING:7 out of 10.

This is a good film, but unfortunately some dunderhead insisted on adding a side love interest that did not in any way involve Stan and Ollie. Why, if you have the greatest comedy team ever would you insist on adding pointless subplots? Who cares if the boy gets the girl--I want more Stan and Ollie. And, because of this, the amount of funny stuff that the boys do is limited to probably a short's worth of humor--stretched out to feature length! When Stan and Ollie ARE on film, they are good--not great. But, even good Laurel and Hardy is well worth watching.

For a better full-length Laurel and Hardy movie, try PARDON US, A CHUMP AT OXFORD or especially SONS OF THE DESERT. And, try to avoid the musical Laurel and Hardy full-length films such as THE DEVIL'S BROTHER or BABES IN TOYLAND. Once again, I want JUST Laurel and Hardy--no love stories, subplots or music--just 100% pure Stan and Ollie!

This Laurel and Hardy film is probably a spoof of a film called "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" that was released earlier the same year. Even though it's titled "Bonnie Scotland" it has very little to do with Scotland. The boys show up in a Scottish village, located somewhere on the back lot of the Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood, after being informed that Stan is an heir to a portion of the estate of a deceased lord. They are disappointed in their hope for riches and in financial straits, so they join the British army. They wind up on the Northwest Frontier in British Colonial India, located just around the corner from Scotland somewhere on the back lot of the Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood. Stan and Ollie provide their usual high jinks and a good time is generally had by all, but the film suffers the same problems of most of their feature length films. The studio filled the script with alternative plots that didn't focus on Mr. Hardy and Mr. Laurel. The plot of "Bonnie Scotland" involves a thwarted romance between the heiress of the lord's estate and a penniless law clerk. It is rather boring and certainly interferes with the comedy. One of the funniest scenes involves Stanley, who is chronically incapable of staying in step with the rest of the soldiers. At one point he gets the soldier next to him to fall into step with him and this gradually spreads until the entire regiment is in step with Stanley. The climax involves a great deal of slapstick and ultimately nothing in the various plots is resolved.