Review of The Finishing Touch

When I think of this 1928 silent Laurel and Hardy comedy short, I picture cop Edgar Kennedy standing next to the house Stan and Ollie are working on, contractor's glue all over his clothes and face, wooden roof shingles plastered all over his body. Ollie had been standing on a board , gluing shingles to the roof, while Stan was sawing the other end, inside the house. When the sawed end comes off, the weight distribution is radically changed, and Ollie falls down. For a mere observer, Kennedy gets more than his share of physical insults.. Later, when the house owner is fighting with L&H over the $500. bonus he had given them, Ollie throws a bucket of thin white liquid(white wash?) on the owner, but most of it lands on Kennedy, covering him from head-to-toe. Meanwhile, Dorothy Coburn, a nurse from the small hospital across the street, comes over again to complain about the noise they make in their work. She trips on something, and falls into the big tub of this while liquid. This is all part of the frenetic climax, culminating in the boys retreating to their truck, squabbling over who is going to move the blocking rock behind their back wheel, that keeps it from rolling down the hill(apparently the emergency brake wasn't working). Unfortunately, they didn't get into the cab fast enough to start the motor before the truck rolls down the hill into the house destroying what hadn't already fallen apart.........Before this,, Ollie put a handful of nails in his mouth, and picked up his hammer and some boards. Unfortunately, he fell where he thought there was a step, and apparently swallowed all the nails. He repeated this twice more, in a running gag. Of course, there are a lot of mishaps involving boards and window frames. I'm sure kids enjoy watching the pair make all their stupid mistakes, so I will give the film an 8 rating. See it at YouTube.