THE THREE STOOGES

Spending over a decade in development hell can generate curiosity about almost any movie, but the Farrelly brothers’ Three Stooges tribute excited generations of fans. Buzz came early: this wouldn’t be a biopic like Mel Gibson’s TV movie from 2000, but new adventures for the knuckleheads set in the present day (apparently period pieces are off limits to the Farrellys. How else to explain setting the movie today when many of the gags and incidents could easily have taken place seventy years ago?)

            In truth, the idea was neither novel nor promising given past experience. Not many people remember The Little Rascals update from the 90s and for good reason. Of course, the Stooges have a stronger and wider fan base and even the most ardent Stooge fan seemed willing to give the Farrellys the benefit of the doubt when they announced their intention to tip their hats at the granddaddies of physical comedy. Indeed, where would Peter and Bob be without them?

            Lucrative cast names began to emerge and either made of broke the trust of fans depending on their level of affection for pure original Stooge spirit. Benicio del Toro and Russell Crowe were both considered for Moe at different points and Sean Penn got as far as accepting the part of Larry, and would have made a fine Larry (no pun intended) at that. Jim Carrey was also attached once and began gaining weight for the role of Curly, but dropped out when he thought the movie was dead in its tracks and he couldn’t gain the pounds. As Carrey explained, “For me, I don’t really want to do anything halfway, and I don’t feel like a fat suit does it.”

            As the big names gradually dropped out, a path was formed for a smaller roster that was cast for the most important reason of all; they are near perfect embodiments of the iconic morons. Will Sasso took on the role of Curly and there could not have been a better choice, while Chris Diamantopoulos became the bowler haired Moe and Sean Hayes jumped in as Larry.

            Despite the setbacks The Three Stooges came to be and the result is a movie that is surprisingly pretty good thanks largely to its leads and the Farrellys’ devotion to the original clowns. Nearly everything that can be leveled against it is true to its source. That it’s hair-brained goes without saying and the overacting is no blunter than in the classic shorts populated with cartoon tough guys, shrill dames, and bullying authorities. For what it’s worth, The Three Stooges amounts to the same innocuous brain vacation offered by the Columbia films.

            It’s even set up in the same way, the story divided into episodes, not a bad choice of terminology for a movie offered to a younger generation of fans who remember the Stooges as a television package rather than cinematic shorts. This fate was unique to The Three Stooges and, to a lesser degree, the Our Gang kids instead of, say, Laurel & Hardy. This was all about timing and both the Stooges and the new wave of Little Rascals were still active well into the era of television despite continuing to work primarily in movie theaters. The Stooges’ attempt to break into television in 1949 with a pilot film called Jerks of all Trades was a failure. Laurel & Hardy, by contrast, made their last film in 1950 and a proposed colored series for television, Laurel & Hardy’s Fabulous Fables, never came to be. Moe, Larry, and the shifting third stooge coexisted with television even as caricatures in an abysmal animated series and then as androids in the dismissed The Robonic Stooges. Larry Harmon made a short-lived cartoon series based on the antics of Stan and Ollie, even allowing his caricatures to guest star in The New Scooby Doo Movies (the Stooges also appeared in an episode) but this has all but been forgotten as have most of Harmon’s properties including his cheapened Popeye cartoons and his pet franchise Bozo the Clown.

            The movie episodes are marked by title cards inspired by the originals (wacky illustrations beneath zany block letters) spruced up here by animation. The three episodes are, however, tied to a common story, based on a 1980s video game starring the boys. When the orphanage where they have spent their entire lives faces foreclosure, Moe, Larry, and Curly set out into the real world hoping to raise the funds to save the place that raised them. They try a variety of jobs, failing spectacularly at each.

            While still under Ted Healy and then again when they were past their prime, the original Stooges made a few feature films (though they had a few cameos in a number of musicals from the 30s, each totaling less than a reel of footage). These were ponderous tired works, stretching old gags far longer than they were worth. Despite working with a feature running time, the Farrellys were smart enough to compartmentalize the movie while focusing on Stooge antics, capturing the fast-pacing of the Jules White classics. Their primary plot turn, a seductress bent on murdering her husband for cash, works with the boys rather than by their side.

            Tributes to the Stooge heyday abound. The orphanage where the film begins is shown to have been founded in 1934, the year the boys signed their fateful contract with Columbia and received their only Academy Award nomination for Men in Black. Their pal at the orphanage, who is later adopted by a vile businessman (Stephen Collins), is named Teddy (Kirby Heyborne) as a nod to Ted Healy, their manager from their vaudeville days who left them dry. After the backlash from Healy’s son over the less than flattering depiction of his father in the AMC biopic, this Teddy was turned into a good natured dope who, nonetheless, proves to be a good buddy.

            There are other, more generalized, salutes to the classic shorts (notably the editing in the grand finale as the boys take off on horseback). But the most overt homage is to the epic pie fight of In the Sweet Pie and Pie, this time done with urinating babies. Of all of the Farrelly homages this one works the least It’s true that they try some clever angles like spoofing Western stand-offs but it’s so fangled from the iconic sequence that to a modern audience it will be just another excuse for the Farrellys’ stock in gross humor.

            Indeed, this sort of confusion is widespread in The Three Stooges. The movie is undoubtedly set in the present, but are these Stooges reincarnations of the originals or the originals having discovered time-travel? Either explanation works, even when considering their ignorance of modern appliances (Curly tries talking through his eye on an iPhone!) In the orphanage the boys were sheltered from the real world, after all. That doesn’t account for the arcaic attire but we can accept that the boys are back if only in spirit.

            For this we can thank Diamantopoulos, Sasso, and Hayes for their near perfect emulations of the originals and the young actors who play the Stooges as children (Skyler Gisondo, Lance Chantiles-Wertz, and Robert Capron) should not be overlooked. In a sense, they had a harder job than their adult counterparts, playing modifications of modifications of the originals. And yet, they capture the essence of the Stooges beautifully.

            Given the uncanny appeal of the leads, the supporting cast could easily be dismissed, but the Farrellys give us plenty of reason not to. Sofia Vergara is modeled after the sexy seductresses that have always duped the boys into wild goose chases, her evil seeping seductively out of her beauty. Craig Bierko makes a fun bumbling thug who suffers more physical abuse than Wile E. Coyote in all his years (getting hit by a bus, ran over, blown up with dynamite, mauled by a lion, and shot with an arrow) and still coming out as unscathed as any cartoon. Stephen Collins is the more or less straight villain who is humiliated by the oblivious knuckleheads. Best of all is Larry David as the long-suffering Sister Mary-Mengele who endures more eye pokes and head bangs from the boys than even the saintliest of nuns would tolerate.

            But the Farrellys have a deeper understanding of Stooge methodology than a good eye for casting. They understand the soul of the first films even at their most nuanced. The Stooges were always downtrodden and growing up in foster homes was always part of their backstory. Many a short concerned them setting off into the world in search of riches with soft spots for their humble origins. In their own incompetent way, they always sought to repay their benefactors. It’s for this reason that their disastrous attempts to fix the orphanage bell rings so true to their nature as does their later decision to become farmers. When the boys triumphantly exclaim, “To the farm!” they are recognizing the farm as the ideal it was recognized as in a lot of Depression-era comedy; the cornerstone of simplicity and earnesty in the American way of life that Irvin Berlin had romanticized in his 1914 ballad "I Want to Go Back to Michigan". 

            On this page it is possible to apprecaite their later wreckage of a swank party, modeled after many similar scenes in their early films. This was a common Marx Brothers set-up as well, but for the Stooges such party crashing was a subconscious (for they were too dumb to realize, much less plan, the destruction in their wake) revenge against the high society that shunned them.

            The Farrellys are so in tune with vintage Stooge spirit that their wrong turns are all the more surprising. Less surprising is where they go wrong, and that is deliberately deviating from the Jules White modus operandi for a fish-out-of-water gag such as Larry’s run-in with urban hoods and Moe’s appearance on Jersey Shore. This misguided alchemy that only creates more ambiguity about what exactly the Farrellys are hoping to accomplish.

            But the biggest misstep involves the boys themselves. In an obvious attempt to appease modern sensibilities, The Three Stooges sentimentalizes the relationship between the trio. Moe, Larry, and Curly were never obvious about their camaraderie; it was always felt and never stated. The real boys were classic Depression-era hard-knocks, never caring to apologize for their hostile knockabout. One eye poke led to another up until a cataclysmic finale, but to the end they remained crabby misanthropes. Perhaps in an attempt to appease modern sensibilities, the movie digs deeper into the dynamics of their companionship when a proposed adoption threatens to separate them as kids, as if we ever needed to be told that they were inseperable. Even harder to take is a later scene where Larry and Curly finally stand-up to the bullying Moe causing the bowelr-cut stooge to part ways in a heart-poking sequence. The real Moe Howard would have bashed their skulls together and the three would immediately jump back to the problem at hand. No time for humanity.

            For true loyalists, nothing will ever replace the Stooge glory days between 1934 to the mid-50s. But, imperfect as it is, The Three Stooges is as soulful a revival as we are likely to get. If it was to be attempted at all, then the Farrelly brothers did it mostly right.