Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

SnorrSm1989 Released the very last year before silent films (at least in Hollywood) once and for all were declared definitely prehistoric, Laurel and Hardy may be said to have made, if one omits Chaplin's two features of the 30's, the final comic masterpiece in the silent medium with BIG BUSINESS. They had proceeded to make pie-throwing appear fresh again a couple of years before in THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, and this little two-reeler confirms perhaps even more bluntly why the boys, once teamed up, are often thought of as the last great innovators of silent comedy.Trying their luck as wandering salesmen of Christmas-trees, Stan and Ollie predestine the eventual doom of their "business" when ringing the door-bell of James Finlayson. Annoyed as usual, James slams the door in front of the salesmen, causing their tree to get hopelessly stuck. Hardy rings the bell one more time, in order to get James to re-open, so he and his partner can get their object loose, and leave; James interprets this second call as a further intrusion, however, and what follows may be said to be the quint-essential demonstration of the "eye for an eye"-philosophy which so very often characterizes all types of comedy without the public even realizing it. Laurel and Hardy, in BIG BUSINESS and on many later instances, make us painstakingly conscious of this tendency in comedy, and what's more: they make a point of making us conscious of it.It starts off with the tearing of clothes, and goes on to involve furniture, windows, a car and Christmas-trees; all in the name of sweet revenge. As with THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, Laurel and Hardy does little here that had not been done (and over-done) plenty of times before, if one watches the film superficially. Had not audiences been fed with frustrated maniacs going berserk on all thinkable objects since the rise of the Mack Sennett Studio one and a half decade before? Definitely. But the oldest of jokes can still be funny, if made funny. These three men—Stan, Ollie, and James—are not maniacs, but reasonably respectable gentlemen finding themselves in an unfortunate misunderstanding, which gradually builds up to a series of spiteful acts going beyond the powers of anyone involved. And it's breathtakingly funny.When I was a child, an acquaintance (approaching ninety by now) recalled howling with laughter at this film when it was originally released, and, already a fan of Stan and Ollie, naturally I longed very much to see it for myself. Getting hold on Robert Youngson's cavalcade WHEN COMEDY WAS KING on video, eventually I did; and howled.

Robert J. Maxwell In this twenty-minute silent short, Laurel and Hardy are door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen. They make the mistake of knocking on James Finlayson's door. Finlayson doesn't want a tree but in closing the door he catches one of its branches, which requires Hardy to ring the doorbell again. It happens again. Then it happens with Laurel's overcoat.One thing leads to another and Finlayson demolishes Laurel and Hardy's Model T Ford, while they do their best to flatten his home.It was to become a fairly regular routine in Laurel and Hardy's movies and has been imitated in other comedies since then -- one man standing there, watching with interest, as a second man deliberately assaults him with a can of paint or a pair of scissors. (See "The Great Race" for at least one example.) An amusing diversion.

rdjeffers Yuletide Mayhem Saturday July 17, 2010, The Castro, San Francisco"Merry Christmas!" Two salesmen who refuse to take "no" for an answer meet their match in an equally stubborn homeowner.Only Stan and Ollie would attempt to sell Christmas trees door-to-door in sunny California. Their failure is of course inevitable, as is the havoc they wreak on the home of unfortunate Jimmy Finlayson, who has the temerity to rile them up! By the time a policeman finally arrives, the house and their truck are all but demolished as a neighborhood crowd watches from the street. Stan pitches breakable objects out a window to a batting Ollie on the lawn, while Finlayson gleefully dismantles their truck, one piece at a time as the cop observes unnoticed.A popular Hollywood myth claims Hal Roach arrived on the set late in the day to discover the cast and crew of Big Business had destroyed the house next-door to the one he purchased for the film!

Libretio BIG BUSINESS Aspect ratio: 1.33:1Sound format: Silent(Black and white - Short film)A minor dispute between two Christmas tree salesmen (Laurel and Hardy) and an irate customer (James Finlayson) escalates into massive mutual destruction.The first collaboration between L&H and veteran comedy director James Horne is a masterpiece of its kind, in which two bickering salesmen become involved in a war of attrition with bad-tempered customer Finlayson (an invaluable member of the L&H universe). The escalation of conflict is joyously contrived (Finlayson reduces The Boys' car to spare parts, and they do the same to his house), and the pay-off - in which the entire cast is reduced to tears! - is no less satisfactory. Legend has it that the filmmakers accidentally destroyed the wrong house, after hiring the one next door...