All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy: For Love or Mummy Reviews

Once again, movie hucksters exhume cinematic corpses without any idea as to what they're digging up. Capturing the look -- but not the essence -- of Laurel and Hardy, impersonators Bronson Pinchot and Gailard Sartain blurrily xerox those inimitable comedians in a mindless romp best enjoyed by moppets. Stan (Pinchot) and Oliver (Sartain), the bungling nephews of the classic comic duo, are volunteer museum guards who run afoul of reincarnation. Bent on ruling the world through a dormant serpent demon, Egyptian Ben Farouk (Philip Godawa) must perform a three-centuries-old ritual marriage between the mummy of Prince Houtah (Matthew Haldenby) and a chosen bride. Can the new Laurel and Hardy prevent museum archivist Leslie Covington (Susan Danford) from becoming wed and dead when she accepts Farouk's offer to exhibit Houtah's mummy? Accused of theft when the reanimated mummy goes for a stroll, Stan and Laurel thwart Farouk's plan, escape the mummy's clutches and trick Houtah into returning to his sarcophagus and vanquish Farouk's resurrected devil god with an electric cable. What more do you expect from a movie produced and co-directed by Larry "Bozo the Clown" Harmon? As with the ERNEST series, the timing of the telegraphed slapstick gags is always a few seconds off, but what makes this so regrettable for comedy purists may be the very thing that endears it to kiddies: Grown-ups will be able to count down the comic zingers with a stopwatch, but small fry will squeal with anticipation of familiar pay-offs. Intended as a modern day equivalent of parodies like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, this witless fun-for-few establishes a bothersome precedent. What next? The Baldwin Boys as the Marx Brothers? Elton John and RuPaul as Burns and Allen? Tori Spelling as Harlow?