Charley Chase's perennial comic formula tended to be to take a embarrassing but fairly basic situation and slowly develop it into a more and more unbearably embarrassing one for his hapless main character over time. "Be Your Age" is slightly different in that instead of going bigger and bigger with the humiliation for Charley, it develops it into a number of funny set-pieces, while letting the fact that here Charley's character is established as hopelessly bashful amplify the comedy.
It works; the situation -- in which Charley must raise a large sum of money quickly for his family, and is pressured by his boss into marrying an unappealing rich widow to do it -- is funny in itself, and the situations are seriously augmented by Chase's playing of the "bashful" angle of his character seldom works as well as here. There's an undercurrent of dark comedy to the reasons for his having to make the money (the absurdly catastrophic list of things that has happened to his family is actually one of the best gags) and Charley's obvious disgust at having to marry such an older woman that works well too.
Oliver Hardy, not far off from fame as a team with Stan Laurel, is here in a small part as a spoiled man-boy. He doesn't get as much to do as in other Charley Chase comedies where he provides support, but he does get one very funny seen where he is mistaken behind a bush for his mother the widow. The finale in which Charley improvises a flamenco dancer costume to avoid his prospective fiancée is a blast, and charmingly, he ends up getting the girl he wants -- albeit by pure accident.
It works; the situation -- in which Charley must raise a large sum of money quickly for his family, and is pressured by his boss into marrying an unappealing rich widow to do it -- is funny in itself, and the situations are seriously augmented by Chase's playing of the "bashful" angle of his character seldom works as well as here. There's an undercurrent of dark comedy to the reasons for his having to make the money (the absurdly catastrophic list of things that has happened to his family is actually one of the best gags) and Charley's obvious disgust at having to marry such an older woman that works well too.
Oliver Hardy, not far off from fame as a team with Stan Laurel, is here in a small part as a spoiled man-boy. He doesn't get as much to do as in other Charley Chase comedies where he provides support, but he does get one very funny seen where he is mistaken behind a bush for his mother the widow. The finale in which Charley improvises a flamenco dancer costume to avoid his prospective fiancée is a blast, and charmingly, he ends up getting the girl he wants -- albeit by pure accident.