A masterpiece! Hog Wild is a lot like Perfect Day, inasmuch as everyone takes a ton of a lot of time and trouble to accomplish absolutely nothing. Unless nothing is also a thorough dismantling of the impulses and attitudes of bourgeois materialism, in which case the boys, and their film too, accomplish a very great deal indeed.
Ollie’s pants are on fire, naturally. (We can’t explain everything around here …) Watch the superb sequence of attempts that Stan makes to address the problem. They’re aggravating, as per usual. But the architecture of the thing! The ingenious variations. The elegant, light-footed execution of the thing! That, getting up and being on the roof (repeatedly falling off of the roof [what happens to the chimney!]), destroying that car—the whole of the film is just a wonderfully fortuitous round of comic craftsmanship, of compound gag construction. I’m resisting the urge to cite J.S. Bach at this point.
I would like to draw your attention to a remarkably bold—confident!—45 second shot, here toward the end of the film. I like to concentrate on content, but technique can enhance that content so much. A beautiful balance, here.