A Chump at Oxford – The Gag’s the Thing

So I put on “A Chump at Oxford” last Saturday around midnight, kinda craving some slapstick that’s not all plastic and computer-generated, you know? Bit nostalgic for those films my mormor used to show on SVT2, where she’d fall asleep on the couch in her cardigan, drooling a bit, while I giggled at men falling into ponds or through doors. Classic stuff.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the big magnets here, no question. They may be Hollywood darlings, but you could plop them straight into Örebro and they’d still get laughs. Only they end up in, yeah, you guessed it, Oxford. Leo McCarey produced, and Alfred Goulding directed – feels like old friends from some previous life. There’s something about those men in suits, wearing ties tighter than a Swede at Systembolaget sales.

The film’s humour is so… I don’t know, loveably stupid? It kind of feels like the Swedish “Jönssonligan” before Gösta Ekman started overthinking the heists. Stan as Lord Paddington, suddenly a genius, totally cracks me up – the eyes and the awkwardness is still pure gold. I have to confess, when they’re chased by those university snobs, I kept remembering when I tried to sneak into Uppsala’s student nation party in 1983 (no fake mustaches involved, though I did borrow a jacket that smelled a bit too much like falu rågrut).

Some bits do drag though. Too many corridor gags make you want to get up for more kaffe. Maybe my tolerance for that sort of comedy comes and goes like my enthusiasm for surströmming. Still, it’s sweet stuff, like folkhemmet on film.

Anyway, if you’ve got a soft spot for old-timey idiocy, and maybe need a reminder university life isn’t all seriousness and lectures about Strindberg, give it a shot. Laugh with your parents. Or your sleeping relatives.

watch the full movie on Mavshack Movies on YouTube

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