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Stan (Laurel) and Ollie (Oliver Hardy) live as tenants in Mother Peep's
(Florence Roberts) shoe in Toyland - that is until Mother Peep is behind
with her mortgage payments to the crooked Silas Barnaby (Henry Brandon),
threatens to throw them all out, that is unless Mother Peep gives him her
daughter Bo-Peep's (Charlotte Henry) in marriage. Stan and Ollie promise
to take care of the affair by getting a loan from their employer, the
Toymaker (William Burress) ... but instead they lose their job because
they have gotten an order wrong and produced 100 six-foot toy soldiers
instead of 600 one-foot soldiers - bugger.
Next, the boys try to steal the money for the rent from Barnaby himelf,
but they get caught and are threatened to be expelled to Bogeyland - the
worst that can happen to an inhabitant of Toyland. They are only saved
from that punishment when Bo-Peep agrees to marry Barnaby after all.
During the wedding though, Stan takes Bo-Peep's place, which Barnaby
doesn't notice until he is tricked out of the mortgage ...
But Barnaby swears revenge, and before long he kidnaps one of the three
little pigs and plants evidence with Tom-Tom (Felix knight), Bo-Peep's
fiancé, who is then banished to Bogeyland, just before Stan and Ollie can
produce evidence that the pignapping was actually Barnaby's doing.
And while Stan and Ollie go to Bogeyland to bring Tom-Tom and Bo-Peep,
who has gone with him, back to Toyland, Barnaby goes there for a different
reason: To summon the Bogeyman (who turn out to be his allies) and conquer
Toyland ... an effort which is only stopped when Stan and Ollie put their
six-foot toy soldiers into action ...
I don't know whoever had the idea to put the back then well-established
comedy duo Laurel and Hardy into a fairy tale operetta - and one with an
incredibly cheesy, childish plotline and incredibly schmaltzy songs at
that - when it is a known fact that their comedy works best in
contemporary settings. The resulting film is of course predictably bad and
not at all worthy of the great comic duo ... but at least every now and
again they just leave the fairy tale business be and do some typical
routines - and then they are hilarious as ever. Still, that's not enough
to save the film (which actually needs a lot of saving).
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