Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A kiddie pic based on Victor Herbert's operetta, that throws aside much of the music (except for only a few songs, such as "I Can't Do That Sum," "Toyland," "Don't Cry, Bo-Peep," "Go to Sleep, Slumber Deep" & "March of the Toys") to highlight the comedy of Laurel and Hardy. Co-directors Gus Meins and Charles Rogers do a nice job keeping things appealing to both children and adults. In 1952, it was renamed March of the Wooden Soldiers.

Stanley Dum (Stan Laurel) and Ollie Dee (Oliver Hardy) live in the peaceful village of Toyland as boarders in the shoe of the gentle widow Peep (Florence Roberts) and her pretty teenage daughter Little Bo-Peep (Charlotte Henry), who tends to her three sheep. The village's meanie elderly landlord, Silas Barnaby (Henry Kleinbach), is rejected by Bo-Peep when he asks for her hand in marriage, and in revenge threatens to evict Mrs. Peep unless she pay her overdue mortgage or convinces her daughter to marry him. Stan and Ollie are bumbling factory helpers to the master toymaker (William Burress) of Toyland, who try to help raise the money by asking for advance pay from their toymaker boss. But he fires them for incompetency when they goof up Santa's order of wooden soldiers: instead of the 600 one-foot tall toy soldiers that Santa needs, the boys told the toymaker to build 100 six-foot tall soldiers.

The next day Silas files theft charges against the boys with the Majesty of Toyland, Old King Cole (Kewpie Morgan), after the boys are caught trying to steal the Peep's deed the landord holds in order to stop the eviction and possible marriage. His Majesty orders the would-be thieves to be ducked in the pond and permanently banished to Bogeyland. An upset Bo-Peep, rather than have mom on the street and the boys banished, agrees to the marriage. The charges are dropped and Mrs Peep moves back into her shoe. On the wedding day, the boys substitute Stan in disguise as the bride, and before Silas can recognize he's been duped he's married and tears up the mortgage. The irate Silas vows revenge, and that night kidnaps Little Elmer, one of the Three Little Pigs, and plants evidence to frame Tom-Tom (Felix Knight). He's the one that Bo-Peep wants to marry. His Majesty banishes Tom-Tom to Bogeyland, but the boys locate Elmer in Silas' cellar and get the banishment overturned. The boys now volunteer to go to Bogeyland to bring back Tom-Tom and find Silas, who fled Toyland before punished by his Majesty. The climactic scene is the kicker, as the bogeymen monsters attack Toyland and the boys deploy the botched order of toy soldiers to repel them (filmed in stop-motion photography by "fx" maven Roy Seawright). 

REVIEWED ON 6/23/2010       GRADE: B+

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

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