Stan & Ollie Garch

When contemporary events feel like you are watching a silent movie, is it innocuous, or do you need to call in Oliver Sacks?

We'll leave this open for the moment.

But that Cyprus bailout does feel like a silent movie.  It's all black and white, there is no need for a dialogue, an intermittent  label with a short sentence or two, or a only a couple of question marks (e.g. ?????) is more than sufficient for following the plot.

As we have seen in many Laurel and Hardy movies, the roles are pretty well defined. In the current bank caper and young maiden rescue (played by Christine Lagarde of IMF fame),  Stan plays the slightly naive prime minister of Cyprus, Ollie is cast as a Russian, his character aptly named Ollie Garch, who tries to save suitcases full of cash from an evil and at the same time very confused, disorganized gang named Troika, really just another word for triad. Several scenes of the short film show different members of the Troika shooting themselves in the foot while you see Stan and Ollie Garch try to get into a bank through steel bar protected windows. The viewer is left wondering, which increases the comedic effect, because they are only some ten yards away from the wide open bank doors guarded by a couple of oblivious security guards in indigo uniforms wearing spiked helmets.

The car chase scenes are more subdued than the audience would probably expect, but given that they have to use a Prius on an island that is not only small but divided into two sealed off parts, we think they are fun to watch.

We will not give away the ending, but would like to point the reader's attention to a little known fact about Laurel and Hardy in Germany.

Laurel and Hardy were known to German TV viewers in the last century as "Dick und Doof". Yeap, Fat and Dumb.