Review: Stan & Ollie

Stan & Ollie is an incredibly satisfying historical and biographical drama, encapsulating the core tenets of not only what the duo meant to each other, but also what their work means to their fans and the future generations that have grown up either around - or aware of - their movies. Baird's film can ultimately be labelled a cast-iron success, thanks mainly to the fabulous performances of his two main protagonists and their supporting cast.

After last year's well-received Comedy Blap (Channel 4's fancy name for a short, if you were wondering), Rufus Jones's sitcom about a family who unknowingly return from a holiday in France with a Syrian refugee (Youssef Kerkour) in their boot receives a full series. Its tone is gentle rather than stridently satirical - understandable given the subject matter - but the gags are strong, the performances are likeable and the issues depicted could not be more timely.

Film review: Stan & Ollie is 'a fine bromance'

Steve Coogan and John C Reilly star in a new biopic of Laurel and Hardy that is an irresistible homage to the iconic comedy duo.

#LFF 2018: Stan & Ollie review

Inspired by the book Laurel and Hardy: The British Tours by A.J. Marriot, who also featured as a consultant on the film, Jon S. Baird's Stan & Ollie is part biography and part homage to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, arguably the greatest stage and screen comedy performers of their time.

Stan & Ollie: Coogan's a hoot, Reilly deserves an Oscar

This tragic-comic biopic is mostly set in 1953, the year Hollywood comedy legends Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy toured the UK and Ireland in hopes of revitalising their careers and mending their friendship (damaged by Ollie's willingness to make a movie, 1939's Zenobia, minus Stan).

2018 BFI London Film Festival Review - Stan & Ollie

The love Laurel and Hardy channelled into their routines is clearly reflected - and respected - by the entirety of Stan & Ollie's cast and crew, and it shines through onscreen in this melancholic but heartfelt celebration of the double act.

Review: Stan & Ollie

Making a comedy about two icons of slapstick is a road so full of pitfalls that even the great men themselves would probably just have taken a different route - one marked "new tarmac" perhaps. And yet the film - like the marriage of a six-foot-one, 280-pound Georgian with a rake of a man from the north of England - just works.

London film review: 'Stan & Ollie'

Portraying Laurel and Hardy's final comic collaboration with bittersweet affection, Jon S. Baird's film is a laid-back, gamely performed tribute

Stan & Ollie review, LFF

Our critic reviews the Laurel and Hardy biopic, starring Steve Coogan and John C Reilly, as it closes out the London Film Festival.

'Stan & Ollie': film review | London 2018

There was little that was bold or adventurous about Laurel and Hardy's comedy, which is doubtless why their films have not been rediscovered by younger generations over the past half-century; unusually for top comics, their work was benign, not subversive. But even if it only occasionally provokes big laughs, this sweet, small film makes you smile most of the way through, which may be a more uncommon feat.