A Chump at Oxford

Stan and Ollie are out of work. They go to an employment agency and are sent to a dinner party as butler and maid, with Stan as the maid. The party falls apart. Later, sweeping the street, they catch a bank robber by accident, and the bank manager rewards them by sending them to be educated: Oxford. At the university the students make fun of them, they move into a set of rooms, and one night Stan hits his head. The blow brings back his old memory. It turns out he was Lord Paddington, the brightest student the place ever had, and he now takes Ollie for his valet. Alfred J. Goulding directed and Hal Roach produced. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star. It is an American production. The film was first finished as a forty two minute short feature; when the distributor refused it, Roach had twenty one minutes of new scenes shot and the sixty three minute version was released. The added section reworks one of the pair's silent shorts from 1928; the butler and maid scenes come from there. It is the second to last film the pair made at the Roach studio. The matter it treats is class; two tramps enter a university and the place does not want them at all. The repeating structure of the shorts is kept; a joke is set up, spoiled, and comes back larger. The section where Stan plays Lord Paddington is nothing like the usual Stanley character. The narrative breaks the pair's friendship and puts it back together at the end. Its limit is structure; it is glued together from two separate pieces and the join shows. Who it is for: viewers who like classic comedy duos and old Hollywood slapstick. Who it is not for: it is dated, loosely built, and the humour rests on repetition.