mark.waltz An aging Laurel and Hardy go back to their days of silent comedy, narrated by comical commentator Pete Smith who helps them identify every day products made out of various types of plastics, and products made out of wood. This is filmed in an early type of color film, not yet perfected with Technicolor. Smith hands this off to another narrator, Lee Vickers, who makes the point of the importance of those various types of plastics and wood in both peace time and war time. It's thus type of educational film that makes knowledge fun, showing a historical combination of movie studio involvement, various ecological preservationalists and the military who was in desperate need of various common materials for their battle needs. Everybody fighting for freedom during the war that everybody pretty much agreed that peace loving countries needed to be in, unfortunately not the last war that the world will be in.

bkoganbing Other than the presence of Laurel&Hardy in it, The Tree In A Test Tube would pass into oblivion that most educational films do. The film is one of the Pete Smith specialties that MGM used to turn out by the dozen, some with humor others that attempted it, but didn't succeed.This is one of them as MGM and Pete Smith thought that the mere presence of Laurel&Hardy would hold the audiences attention as the audience listened to a litany of the many uses that wood has in our daily lives.Maybe if Stan&Ollie did some of their shtick during the short it might be better remembered. As it is it's for Stan&Ollie completists only.

tavm While I had seen the Laurel and Hardy segment of this educational short in various bargain basement VHS tapes and some of the Lee Vickers serious stuff in a bargain basement DVD, it's not until now when I played the Fox DVD of A-Haunting We Will Go that I watched the entire thing as it appeared in various classrooms and corporate meetings. The print hardly seemed an improvement on the other tapes or disc but I guess Fox did the best they could find. I found myself smiling a bit at some of the doings of the boys as they show beginning narrator Pete Smith all the various wood products they have on themselves but the results were hardly hilarious. Still, it was a nice rare look at Stan and Ollie in color. After their bit, Vickers shows us how important wood is for the war effort as this film ends with the patriotic music playing with the American flag flying on screen. All in all, an interesting curio for any fan of L & H.

wmorrow59 This brief wartime educational short is remembered today for one reason only: it offers the rare sight of Laurel & Hardy in color. (They also appear briefly in a surviving color trailer for the lost feature The Rogue Song, and in some 8mm home movie footage from the 1950s.) The Tree in a Test Tube was produced to promote wood conservation on the home front, and for some reason Stan and Ollie were recruited to appear in one sequence. If you're a die-hard fan it's worth a look, but be forewarned, it's a pretty depressing experience. The guys were past their prime, they didn't age well, and they seem quite out of place in the world of the 1940s.The Laurel & Hardy sequence opens this film and was shot silent, with music and overbearing narration added later by Pete Smith of the "Pete Smith Specialties." Smith's films are generally amusing on their own terms, but the wise guy delivery he employs here is at odds with Laurel & Hardy's childlike style of humor. While the guys dutifully display various items in their wallets made from wood and wood by-products, narrator Smith yammers instructions at them like a drill sergeant; worse still, Stan and Ollie are the butt of his sarcastic quips. The closest we get to a gag comes when Stan finds a pair of nylons -- presumably Mrs. Laurel's property -- in his wallet, and feigns embarrassment while Smith chides him. The nagging narration evokes the spirit of the times, while the aging comedians seem like throwbacks to another era.For what it's worth, the redness of Stan's hair and the blueness of his eyes are quite apparent here, even in the somewhat washed-out 16mm print I saw, while Babe Hardy's face appears far more tan than he ever looked in any of their black & white films. This short possesses historic value for its offbeat subject matter and the color cinematography, but for entertainment I'd much rather watch in the guys in their youthful prime in something like You're Darn Tootin' or Busy Bodies, great comedies that don't require any narration from Pete Smith or anyone else.