When it comes to comedy in its entirety, no one has raised the bar more than “The Three Stooges.”
With their physical farce and extreme slapstick routines dating back to the early ’20s through the early ’70s, it didn’t take long for them to become cult icons in American society.
Even to this day, their old black-and-white short films are running on AMC in the early morning hours. I’d say that speaks a lot about their legacy if we’re still watching something that dates back almost 100 years ago.
But even with all this knowledge, I was still one of the many people who were skeptical about the Farrelly brothers’ interpretation of “The Three Stooges” movie. It is mainly because I don’t have faith in the way Hollywood transforms older classics and interpretations into new flashy 3-D letdowns.
But with a glass-half-full mind set, I opened up my smuggled-in gummy bears and hoped for the best.
To my surprise, the film begins with the opening sequence that is just like that of the short films, showing the three main stooges’ faces along the bottom with the title of the skit and the goofy-sounding intro music. It was nice to see the Farrelly brothers keep that small but important symbolism in the film.
Abandoned when they were only a few months old, Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos), Larry (Sean Hayes) and Curly (Will Sasso) grow up in the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. By the age of 10, they have wreaked their typical stooge-like havoc, leaving the nuns terrified of their presence.
When the nuns eventually hear about a prospective couple coming to adopt, they quickly devise a plan to make it seem like the stooges are the only available prospects, along with a boy named Teddy who stumbles in when the couple is deciding who they want to choose.
The couple decides to pick Moe and take him home with them. But when Moe asks if Larry and Curly could come live with them, they drop him back off at the orphanage and take Teddy instead.
Twenty-five years pass by, and the trio is still living at the orphanage, up to their usual tricks and attempting to lend a helping hand as much as possible. The plot starts to thicken, however, when word gets out that the orphanage will be shut down due to past due bills totaling $830,000.
The trio offers to help out and raise the money to save not only the orphanage, but the only home they’ve ever known, setting them off on an adventure so absurd and ridiculous that it could only happen to The Three Stooges.
This was the point in the movie where my skepticism had all but dwindled away for two main reasons.
The first one was that even though it may seem a little too convenient to have the stooges meet and grow up the way they did, it still sticks to the original forum, meaning the stooges themselves didn’t change and their slapstick and physical farce was still present even at a young age.
The second and most important reason for me was the classic sound effects. From the first eye-poke to the classic bonk on the head, it sounded just like the old short film sound effects.
If the Farrelly brothers would have changed those in any way, the movie was a bust as far as I was concerned.
The only problem I could see happening with this movie is the fact that it might go over some peoples’ heads. You have to remember that there is a huge generation gap from when the stooges were popular.
Kids and young adults today may have never seen the original shorts of The Three Stooges and may not fully appreciate Curly’s “nyuk-nyuk-nyuks” or Moe’s eye-pokes.
My only suggestion would be to go to YouTube and watch some of the old short films. Then you will have a better understanding and appreciation of what the film is trying to get across.
While I enjoyed the film and haven’t had a good laugh like that in a while, I recommend just waiting to watch it on DVD or Netflix.
Very rarely is it worth dishing out the money to see a movie in the theater these days and “The Three Stooges” is no exception to the rules, no matter how many nyuk-nyuk-nyuks, eye-pokes and head-bonks there are.
