JB: Oh, they tried, they really tried. They brought back Edgar Kennedy, they brought in Daisy Bumstead to pinch-hit for Laughing Gravy, they gave the Boys a shop not unlike the one they owned in Tit for Tat --- but with all this, they forgot to provide any comedy. Edgar Kennedy's few scenes with Laurel and Hardy look like they are going to build to something really good --- yet it never happens. There is another scene where Stan has to sign his name. Randy Skretvedt in LAUREL AND HARDY: THE MAGIC BEHIND THE MOVIES picks apart the flaws in this scene perfectly. All of Laurel and Hardy's mannerisms and quirks are written out, and instead, what we are left with is Stan, in closeup, struggling to write his name. "It's like being asked to laugh at someone who is mentally retarded," says Skretvedt, and that pretty much sums up most of these later films.      And we also get a goodly amount of self-pity, a trait that the Roach version of Stan and Ollie would never allow to come to the surface. "We're no good", "Uncle Sam doesn't want us", "Please kill us", etc. Ollie can almost get away with this stuff --- there is even about one minute of the Boys at night, talking to each other in the alley behind their shop, that I swear to God looks like it's going to develop into a L&H version of MARTY --- but Stan doesn't know how to play pathos scenes. That is no fault of his --- Stan is a brilliant comic actor but rarely had to play straight scenes.      To our ever growing list of Late L&H Film Drinking Game Items (the Boys in outlandish costumes, a funny invention, gangsters), AIR RAID WARDENS adds "Nazis". In these films late Laurel and Hardy films you never know where you'll find a Nazi next. Probably standing right next to a gangster. Holding a funny invention.      AIR RAID WARDENS is not really "Laurel and Hardy". It's more like "Laurel and Hardly"