Busy Bodies

Busy Bodies is a short comedy starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as a pair of men who have just started work at a sawmill. Their routine day on the job quickly goes wrong as they clash with machinery, tools, fellow workers and their own clumsiness, turning the workplace into a series of mishaps that eventually send them fleeing from an angry foreman.

Released in October 1933 and running about nineteen minutes, the film was directed by Lloyd French and produced by Hal Roach for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Laurel and Hardy play Stan and Ollie, with Charlie Hall, Jack Hill, Dick Gilbert and Tiny Sandford appearing in supporting roles. Stan Laurel also worked on the screenplay alongside Stanley Rauh and Charley Rogers, a pattern of behind-the-scenes involvement that was common in his films with Hardy.

The film is one of the many shorts the comedy duo made during their long and prolific partnership in the 1930s. Audience responses remain positive: on IMDb it holds a rating of 7.6 from roughly 3,200 votes, while on TMDB its score is 7.3 from about 100 votes. These figures point to a well-liked entry in the Laurel and Hardy catalogue rather than a broadly debated one, with viewers consistently rating it above average.