508 - Utopia, United States, 1950. Dir. Leo Joannon.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

508 - Utopia, United States, 1950.  Dir. Leo Joannon.

Stan receives an inheritance from his uncle!

Unfortunately, his other uncle--Uncle Sam--takes it for taxes.

So Stan is out of money.

But at least he has his boat.  An old, dilapidated, ramshackle, threadbare, shabby-sham set of barely bobbing boards.  A somber, crumbling tumble-down of timber lumber.  A frowner-downer of a schooner.  A scowl of a scow.  A yucky yacht.  A sloppy sloop.  A sorry dory.  A dingy dinghy. 

At least it floats.

Well, it drifts, anyway.  It wafts the wakes of the waves.

Ever since Ollie took engine parts out of the engine room and handed them to Stan, who in turn laid them on the deck, only to have them slide off into the sea, the boat no longer has a motor.

It barely has a rudder.

Time to hoist the sail.

Wait.  What is that man doing living wrapped-up inside the sail?

A stowaway.

That explains where all the rations have been going.

Ollie is convinced that Stan has been taking his drink.

Stan is convinced that Ollie has been taking his food.

Giovanni Copini has been taking both.

We now have four men set a-sail.  The two men.  Their chef.  And the stowaway.

And the seastorm.

And the shipwreck.

And the deserted island.

Christened Cruseoland.

Named after that book they found on the boat called Robinson Crusoe.

The film shifts.

It becomes a parody of a documentary.

A voice-over speaks in booming voice of our man Adam in Eden without his Eve.

Then it shifts again.

A parody of a foreign film.

Over in Tahiti the lovely Cherie Lamour sings in clubs, marries Lieutenant Jack Frazer, and the two talk in loud, ill-synced ADR voiceover above the dialogue of the hard-to-hear bartender.  They argue.  He wants her to give up her career and devote herself to him.  She would be willing but he is gone to sea for months out of the year.  What is she to do back on the island without him?  She might as well sing.  He grows more jealous.  She leaves.

And winds up, but of course, on Crusoeland.

Lt. Frazer comes looking for her, and the plot thickens.

And it all goes south.

To the South Seas.


Utopia, originally known as Atoll K, was the last film made by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  Together they made more than one hundred films, both short and feature.  They each made more than that separately, before they came together as a comedy team.

Oliver Hardy would live just a few more years before dying.  Stan Laurel would live a few more.