4 stars out of 5
Oh, how I loved the Three Stooges when I was a boy. Do kids today have any idea who they are? And assuming the answer is no, which is the last era of kid when a solid majority would be Stooge-aware? The last Stooges anything I can recall was the top-20 hit “The Curly Shuffle” by Jump ‘n the Saddle Band back in 1984.
So it was exciting—for me, anyway, and I imagine for many other boys who were nyuck-nyuck-youngsters in my day and before—when it was announced that a new Stooges movie was being planned. Who did we hear would be in it? Jim Carrey? Sean Penn? I forget. And then I forgot all about the movie until I saw a trailer recently. There were no superstars in the lead roles. And… it was funny. Very funny. Dare I look forward to this movie? I dared.
And now I’ve seen the whole movie and… I kind of loved it. Maybe it helped that I knew almost nothing about the movie going in. I didn’t even remember that it was a Farrelly Brothers movie until just before the end credits. (Not that I’ve seen a Farrelly Brothers movie since Shallow Hal back in 2001.) Of course I had some trepidation going in, as I do with any reboot/reinvention: Will they ruin it by modernizing it? Will the material and performances not match up to my treasured memories?
But I was charmed right from the start. There is a hilarious nun, obviously played by a man, and it took me entirely too long to figure out it was Larry David. My god is he funny in this. Plus you get Jane Lynch and Brian Doyle-Murray also playing people of the cloth, so you get the sense early on that this is a quality project. {Also donning habits: Jennifer Hudson, doing some solid comic work, and Kate Upton, who is in the movie from the start but was really only cast for one brief shot toward the very end.) The kids playing Larry, Moe, and Curly at 10 years old are fantastic. The young Moe even looks more like Moe than the adult Moe.
The movie is sweetly old-fashioned and very respectful of the source material, while still being wildly entertaining. (Maybe the Farrellys could remake Hugo.) We flash-forward 25 years to the adult Stooges (even though the nuns don’t seem to age at all, which I found amusing). And they’re still kind of trapped in the ’40s even though they were infants in the mid-’70s. Funny, funny, funny. Early on, I was laughing louder at the eye pokes, slaps, hair-pulling, etc. than the younger folks in the audience, but soon enough the audience caught on.
We get an innocent, old-timey plot: The boys have to raise $830,000 to save their beloved orphanage. (The movie is even divided into three “shorts.”) From there on it’s sort of a fish-out-of-water story, but the Farrellys refreshingly downplay the zany contrast of these ’40s fellas in the 21st century. Instead, it’s just the Stooges doing what they do in a modern setting.
Not every joke works, and, because it’s the Farrellys, there is a little unnecessary gross-out humor that seemed below Stooge-level (farting, peeing, boob laughs). I had mixed feelings about a water-gun-esque shootout with peeing babies as the guns. It was needlessly crude but at the same time, pretty clever.
Still, the percentage of gags that work is very high. You really get your money’s worth with the Stooges. There are a lot of movies with dumb guys in them. But between being funny/dumb, those guys just stand around or walk from here to there. The Stooges are always giving, they’re always on. Each moment is a tightly choreographed bit. And these actors pull it off. I didn’t even recognize Sean Hayes right away, who was “Just Jack” on that show I never watched. While he doesn’t bear a strong facial resemblance to Larry, his voice work is tremendous. And big kudos to the actors who I don’t know at all who played Moe and Curly. Really, really nice work.
To top it off, it’s totally fine for the kids. And I think kids will ultimately relate. To stack the deck, there are sweet (though not that interesting) kids at the orphanage, and the scenes with the young Stooges take up a surprising amount of screen time. I did worry that, if successful, it might bring up the old “will kids imitate this behavior” arguments. However, the movie is much more wide-eyed and far less cynical than most modern offerings for the post-G/pre-PG-13 set. And to top it off, the Farrellys (or their stunt doubles, anyway) do a nice “this is all fake, don’t ever do an eye poke” segment right after the last scene. They know the true audience for the Stooges will always be little dudes, and they’re looking out for them in more ways than one.
Jack Silbert, curator