A Chump at Oxford (1940)

Directed by Alfred J. Goulding. Starring Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Gerald Rogers, Forrester Harvey, Wilfred Lucas, James Finlayson, Anita Garvin, Eddie Borden, Frank Baker, Charles Hall.

Laurel & Hardy campus comedy (the penultimate picture they did at Hal Roach Studios) doesn’t have any classes or sporting events, just snobs bullying the hapless duo with the “royal initiation.” An okay effort for the boys, inessential but amusing enough in spots to be worth watching. The script is awfully uninspired, though, even for such an obvious target/setting; it even includes a bizarre sub-plot where Stan (who had been traveling around with his partner-in-hijinks for quite some time) is actually a much-admired scholar and athlete who conked his head and lost his memory years ago—no twist or reveal here, they really are the same person. Most of the film’s funniest moments occur before the duo even gets to school, including a barely-connected first act that was tacked on just to push the streamliner pic into feature-length status (a twist on similar material from their 1928 short, From Soup to Nuts). One of the students is played in Peter Cushing in one of his earliest film roles.

58/100