Sons of the Desert, the fourth of [Laurel & Hardy’s] full-length films, is, I think, the most perfect of them; it doesn’t, like its possible rivals Blockheads and A Chump at Oxford, depend on a knowledge of their career as a whole to get its full effect. (Some critics, in fact, give the preference to Way Out West). It is also the best of their ‘domestic’ films. Each of them is married, and we see a lot of the wives.

The Sons of the Desert are a Masonic type of fraternity to which Stan and Ollie belong (Ollie in real life was a master mason). They are both committed to attending the annual convention, i.e. annual binge, but have yet to inform their wives. From his deportment at the meeting which opens the film (at the reading of the line from their constitution that “the weak must be helped by the strong”, he gives a wonderfully condescending look at Stan), and from what he says on the taxi-ride home, we gather that Ollie will simply inform his wife while Stan meekly asks for permission. The film is a gradual and subtle modification of our expectations; and the interest is sustained by the fact that the way they are treated is related to what they deserve. It is an exploration of the different degrees of ‘innocence’ of Laurel and Hardy. […]

The film is very much more than a moral schema. It is deeply funny, with a great richness of detail, meticuously acted and plotted, and directed with an understanding of the timing which Laurel and Hardy’s personalities dictate (direction is credited to William A. Seiter, who made no other film with them). They have mastered the longer form: the film has as tight a unity as any of the shorts, but uses its extra length to good purpose. The Masonic pastiche, and the whole scene at the Convention (about twenty minutes of film), is admirably sharp, never losing touch, as do sections of other features, with the main thread. The song-and-dance cabaret number Honolulu Baby, for instance, quite elaborately staged, is not just an interlude but closely integrated: it is functional in reminding them of Honolulu (thus starting a new plot-development), and it forms the basis of two later scenes in which Stan and Ollie very enjoyably recreate it. Ollie’s brother-in-law, quintessential fraternity bore, is played by Charley Chase, an excellent Roach comedian in his own right and the brother of their long-time director, James Parrott.

Charles Barr, Laurel & Hardy, Studio Vista, London 1968