The Good: Moments of performance (usually by peripheral character actors)
The Bad: Dismal plot, Lack of character development, Nothing superlative in most of the acting, Largely not funny!
The Basics: The modern remake of The Three Stooges is ridiculous, filled with comedic violence and, above all, not funny.
It is a rare thing that I get to use the phrase “perfect shitstorm of craptastic cinematic factors,” but for The Three Stooges, I will pull that phrase out. Following on the heels of Jack And Jill (reviewed here!) sweeping the Razzies, Project X has some competition for next year’s anti-award’s show in The Three Stooges. The Three Stooges is, as one might suspect from the trailers, that bad. What is worse than the film being bad in the areas of plot, character and acting is that the film is not funny. For an alleged comedy to go so long without making me laugh (for the record, zero laughs in the entire film!), the rest is unforgivable. If you’re going to sacrifice the key elements of a movie – telling a good story, populating it with interesting characters, giving actors a chance to perform in new and interesting ways – the payoff for that needs to be incredible. With The Three Stooges, it is not.
Instead, The Three Stooges is a humorless slapstick adventure that recreates the style and character types of the classic television series The Three Stooges. Recast and modernized for 2012, to a point, The Three Stooges unleashes three dimwits on the audience who are not worth watching at all. And, as the fundamental problem with so much slapstick, far too much of The Three Stooges derives an attempt at laughter out of physical gags that look utterly excruciating. The Three Stooges is like a violent horror movie, without the gore.
Moe, Larry and Curly are dropped off at an orphanage where they are cared for by nuns. They grow up and remain at the orphanage as the maintenance crew taking care of the grounds and the building, usually with many pratfalls and physical altercations that would leave others bloody or dead. When the orphanage is facing foreclosure from financial difficulties, the three adults put their heads together to try to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to save it. Good fortune seems to smile upon them when they encounter Lydia, who comes at the idiots in a roundabout way to get them to kill her husband. As Larry, Curly and Moe struggle to save the orphanage without murdering their old friend from the orphanage, they find themselves in increasingly more dangerous and ridiculous situations, not the least of which is reality television!
Like the television show that bore its name and the concept, The Three Stooges is far less about a sensible plot with interesting characters and is instead an elaborate set-up for physical comedy that looks painful, ridiculous and/or embarrassing. The Three Stooges lives up to its inspiration in that regard; the movie is filled with slapstick humor, quick physical gags and contrived situations that allow for chaos and ridiculousness. While The Three Stooges may have gotten the physics and speed of such slapstick absolutely right, it does not make for a satisfying movie at all.
Foremost, the characters are, predictably, idiots. But there are films where ridiculous characters can interact with the real world in a way that genuine comedy ensues. The Three Stooges is not that film. Instead, Larry, Curly and Moe are impossible to empathize with and their methods make them uncomfortable to watch. I actually noticed by the fourth time Larry got smacked by Moe that the audience I was watching The Three Stooges with started to shift uncomfortably. While Moe is given some motivation as the leader supposedly looking out for Curly and Larry, the way he treats his peers is reprehensible.
The big mystery for me is how so many talented comedic performers ended up in The Three Stooges. Why Jane Lynch would agree to participate in a film where Snooki is given more promotion than her is a mystery. Similarly, Sofia Vergara is used in a surprisingly listless way as Lydia. Having been watching the early episodes of Modern Family, it is incredibly clear that Vergara has the ability to play both funny and incredibly deadpan. In The Three Stooges, she is used as a vixen, but she uses none of her talents. Vergara could have been swapped out with virtually any Hollywood-good looking actress and the role would have gained or lost nothing.
The Three Stooges hinges largely on Chris Diamantopoulos as Moe. I realized I had only seen Diamantopoulos before on a single episode of Frasier and the truth is his role was utterly unmemorable. As Moe, he plays off Will Sasso’s Curly and Sean Hayes’s Larry well, but outside the trio’s ability to time slapstick gags well, they do nothing to create interesting or even viable characters on screen. Diamantopoulos has Moe carrying a huge amount of anger, but he presents it in a dry, often mechanical way that is hardly an impressive performance.
In the end, it is hard to muster up the enthusiasm to write about such a one-trick pony of a film. But for those who are considering it, the last words you should read on The Three Stooges are these: it wasn’t funny.
For other works with Jane Lynch, please visit my reviews of:
Glee - Season 2
Rio
Glee - Season 1
Shrek Forever After
The L Word - Season 2
Boston Legal
Best In Show
1/10
For other movie reviews, please visit my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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