The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster!

Fans of the antics of old-time Hollywood’s great comic teams—Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, etc.—may be amused by this collection of shorts made in 2013-15, which mimic the two-reelers of yesteryear, both in technical and comedic terms. Nick Santa Maria and Will Ryan play Benny Biffle and Sammy Shooster, respectively, stars of five shorts supposedly dating from the 1930s. Biffle is the straight man while Shooster is the loony sparkplug whose bad jokes and facial contortions resemble the riffs of Curly Howard as much as Lou Costello. The pair are surrounded by actors who are billed in the credits as actual supporting players from the old Hal Roach comedies and Three Stooges shorts—among them spirited blonde Mae Busch (Trish Geiger), pompous Vernon Dent (Glenn Taranto), tough guy James Burke (Robert Forster), master of the slow-burn Edgar Kennedy (Daniel Roebuck), and perpetual drunk Arthur Housman (Robert Picardo). Written and directed by Michael Schlesinger and mostly shot in black-and-white (a sort of musical revue called Schmo Boat is crafted to look like early color), the shorts certainly work as homages—one is a dopey murder mystery, another a sitcom in which Shooster pretends to be Biffle’s wife at a dinner for his boss, a third offers a takeoff on Frankenstein—but are hardly in the same league as the best of the films they are modeled on. Extras include a bonus short, audio commentaries (by Schlesinger, Santa Maria, and Ryan), deleted scenes, outtakes, bloopers, a supposed cameo made by the fictional pair for It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and some nostalgic pseudo-PSAs. An ambitious labor of love that is uneven, this should still be considered a strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)