Los Presidiarios Review: Laurel and Hardy Speaking Spanish Is So Weird

If you have ever wanted to watch Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy stumble through Spanish sentences they clearly did not understand, this is your lucky day. It is a weirdly charming watch for film history nerds, but if you hate slow pacing and awkward pauses, stay far away. 🍿

Basically, Los presidiarios is just the Spanish version of their first feature, Pardon Us.

Back in 1931, they did not dub movies for foreign markets. Instead, they just shot the whole thing again with the actors reading phonetic cue cards.

You can literally see Stan's eyes darting off-screen to read his lines. It is hilarious, maybe not always for the reasons they originally intended.

The plot is pretty simple. The boys get thrown in jail for homebrewing beer during Prohibition.

But the real joy is just watching them try to exist in this alternate linguistic universe. It's rhythm is totally off, but in a way that is kind of beautiful.

Oliver still does his famous camera looks. But now he adds a soft, confused "Señor" to his deep sighs.

Some of the supporting cast is different too. They brought in native Spanish-speaking actors to replace the original bit players, which makes the vibe feel even more disjointed.

It feels like two different movies stitched together. One is a standard Hollywood comedy, and the other is a strange foreign experiment.

I noticed the prison guards seem way more intense here. In the English version, they felt like typical cartoonish bullies, but here they just look tired and genuinely angry.

There is this one scene where Stan does his famous raspberry-sounding tooth buzz. The reaction shot from the guard lasts way too long.

Like, we get it, he is annoyed. But the camera just stares at his angry face for five seconds of complete silence.

It reminds me of the weird pacing you sometimes get in silent dramas like The Bond Boy, where every emotion has to be held forever.

But then, out of nowhere, they have a musical number in the cotton fields.

Yes, really. Stan and Ollie are hiding in disguise, and they join in on a song.

It is incredibly surreal to hear this sung in Spanish by a chorus of extras who look like they want to be literally anywhere else. 😅

If you have seen their shorter films like The Whole Truth, you know how good the boys are with simple, escalating frustration. Here, the frustration is extra real because they are fighting the language itself.

Is it better than the English version? No, absolutely not.

Comedy needs perfect timing, and phonetic reading is the death of timing. The jokes land with a soft thud because of the long pauses between lines.

But as a piece of history, it is fascinating. You can almost see the sweat on their foreheads as they try to remember how to pronounce the words.

It is a messy, slightly broken relic from a time when Hollywood was just making things up as they went along.