Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Tree in a Test Tube" is a color short film from 1943. It is World War II and there were so many American propaganda films out there. This is one of these. And it is more known than many of the others because of the inclusion of Laurel & Hardy (both around the age of 50 here). But they only show up in the first couple minutes and afterward, it becomes even more bland than it already was early on. Not even this duo can turn mediocrity to gold. I don't know who I would recommend this film to, maybe foresters I guess. Pete Smith, an Academy Award darling, also worked on this one here and I cannot say that it made m e curious about any of his many many other works. There's 6-minute and 10 minute versions (restored DVD) of this one out there and I can only say the shorter the better, even if I watched the 10-minute version. Thumbs down from me. Don't check it out unless you really love Laurel & Hardy.

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.

JoeytheBrit It's surprising how old Laurel and Hardy look in this wartime propaganda short. They were only a few years past the prime of their career, but they looked like that period was about twenty years behind them.Made in their lunch hour according to IMDb's trivia section, you can't help thinking they could have probably found more interesting ways of filling their time. The film consists of Pete Smith's voice telling them all about the different things wood is used for. There must have been a reason the US government felt it was important that the country should know about this, but you have to wonder why. Was it so people would be kinder to wood? Or perhaps they wanted people to stop hoarding it. Whatever the reason, the boredom quotient of the subject matter is counter-balanced by Stan and Ollie's presence - they're definitely the best thing about this short.

MartinHafer The film consists of a narrator talking to Laurel and Hardy. The boys say nothing much (other than a laugh) and it was made on grainy color film for release in the theaters during WWII to educate (and bore) audiences on the importance of having wood.This was a Pete Smith Specialty--one of many Pete Smith shorts made during the 1940s. Compared to the other Pete Smith shorts I have seen, this one manages to be even duller--even though it uses Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy to demonstrate that they've got wood in practically everything they are carrying--such as rayons, pressed wood, etc. In many ways, it looks like a film that should have been made for a wood products convention, as no other human beings could possibly find this interesting. In fact, tedious is probably the best description of the short. Even die-hard fans of Laurel and Hardy (like myself) would find this excruciating and you can't detect even the faintest whiff of a laugh.