The Three Stooges (2012)
Directed by Bobby Farrelly
Left on the doorstep of an orphanage run by nuns, three newborn knuckleheads grow up to be finger-poking, nyuk-nyuking janitors named Larry, Curly and Moe. When they learn that financial problems will soon force the only home they've ever known to close, the trio sets out to raise $830,000 in one month. Out in the world for the very first time, the three innocent bumblers become embroiled in a murder plot and find stardom on a TV reality show.
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The plot is cribbed from The Blues Brothers, a clever ploy to rope in the same demographic that transferred their childhood Stoogemania to Jake and Elwood Blues in the 1980s.
The plot is a combination of The Blues Brothers and Fletch with a little “Jersey Shore” thrown in for … well, there’s never a good reason to include “Jersey Shore” is there?
Somewhat akin to Jake and Elwood needing to raise money to save an orphanage in "The Blues Brothers," our dimwitted trio -- played by Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes and Will Sasso -- go out into the real world to find enough funds to keep their orphanage open.
But in this film, they lazily borrow the premise of “The Blues Brothers” (they have to raise money to keep the orphanage that has been their home since they were abandoned there as infants decades ago) and become entangled in a murder plot and “Jersey Shore.”
They also blatantly lift from the plots of both " The Blues Brothers " and " Beavis and Butthead Do America " (the story has the Stooges trying to raise money to save their beloved orphanage, and running afoul of a contract-killing scheme in the dumb process), neither of which is an entirely inapposite comic model, so that's OK.
You would think that after having been wrestling with the project for than a decade that the Farrellys and co-writer Mike Cerrone might have been able to come up with a narrative that didn't consist of roughly 70% old bits and pieces cribbed directly from routines seen in the original Stooges shorts and the remaining 30% ported over from "The Blues Brothers."
They aren't even as inspired as Kevin McAllister's booby-trapped revenge against burglars Harry and Marv in 1990's "Home Alone."
Off the top of my head, the last time a movie nailed consistent slapstick was the finale of Home Alone.
Virtual unknown Chris Diamantopoulous, Sean Hayes (2008's " Soul Men "), and Will Sasso (2010's " Life as We Know It ")?as well as child counterparts Skyler Gisondo (2007's " Halloween "), newcomer Lance Chantiles-Wertz, and Robert Capron (2011's " Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules ")?have perfected the looks and mannerisms of the original Moe, Larry and Curly right down to the most subtle of actions and facial expressions.
In a bid for adoption engineered by Sister Rosemary (Jennifer Hudson, "Sex and the City 2") to only include the trio but which is 'crashed' by young Teddy (Jake Peck), Moe (Skyler Gisondo, 2007's "Halloween") gets the nod (after an 'American Idol' style fakeout from adoptive dad Mr. Harter (Stephen Collins, TV's '7th Heaven')), but when asked what he wants for his 'birthday,' wishes for his two friends.
These things are almost always ill-advised—the shelves at Netflix distribution centers are bulging with unwanted copies of The Little Rascals (1994).
After all, the whole notion of hiring contemporary actors to try to revive an act that succeeded as much as a result of the original performers and the comedic timing and rapport that they developed through years on the stage and in front of the movie cameras just seemed weird at best and potentially disastrous at worst, as anyone who saw the 1994 revival of "The Little Rascals" or that ersatz Laurel & Hardy feature featuring Bronson Pinchot as Laurel and someone else as Hardy, a creation so bizarre and unsettling to behold that when I stumbled upon it on cable one bleak morning completely unawares as to its existence, I thought I was genuinely cracking up for good.
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Occasionally the set pieces are as sharp as the Stooges are dumb, thanks to the rough craftsmanship of directors Del Lord and Charley Chase and writers Felix Adler and Clyde Bruckman — a famous gagman for three decades, and co-director of Buster Keaton’s immortal silent comedy The General.
Along the way, a string of big names were briefly attached, including Jim Carrey, Hank Azaria, Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn, which is curious, since the dour Penn hasn't been intentionally funny since Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Virtual unknown Chris Diamantopoulous, Sean Hayes (2008's " Soul Men "), and Will Sasso (2010's " Life as We Know It ")?as well as child counterparts Skyler Gisondo (2007's " Halloween "), newcomer Lance Chantiles-Wertz, and Robert Capron (2011's " Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules ")?have perfected the looks and mannerisms of the original Moe, Larry and Curly right down to the most subtle of actions and facial expressions.
This is Larry (Sean Hayes: Soul Men , Igor ), Curly (Will Sasso: Life as We Know It ), and Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos), and screenwriter-director Farrelly brothers Peter and Bobby ( The Heartbreak Kid , Shallow Hal ) figure they can attach a plot to this -- about Sofia Vergara ( New Year's Eve , Happy Feet Two ) hiring them to kill her husband, holy god make it stop -- and it will be acceptable entertainment to those who have achieved control of their bowels.
Now, in the nakedest homage yet, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the Rhode Island siblings who used to own a near-monopoly on rude movie humor (Dumb & Dumber, There’s Something About Mary), have perpetrated a feature-length tribute to the short-film trio and called it, with ardor overwhelming ingenuity, The Three Stooges.
Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who had been eyeing this as their dream project since before they made “There’s Something About Mary,” the new film attempts to bring the time-tested Stooges slapstick formula to the present day, complete with loads of modern pop culture references.
However, Bobby and Peter Farrelly (Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary) are huge fans of the Stooges and have been attempting to get a Three Stooges movie made for at least the past 10 years.
Veteran comedy filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly ( Dumb & Dumber , There’s Something About Mary ) have been talking about making a movie based on The Three Stooges for more than a decade, but as long-in-the-works dream projects go, it’s pretty anticlimactic.
For those without built-in affection for the comedy goofballs from the 1930s-’50s, Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s (“There’s Something About Mary”) rejuvenation of the characters registers as both better than it looks and worse than it needed to be.
If it weren’t for the iconic series from which their pop culture gene pool originated, the Farrelly brothers would be criticised for making full throttle fun of retarded people in ways more extreme than the mental handicaps they’ve previously leveraged jokes on, such as Mary’s brother in There’s Something About Mary (1998) and Jim Carrey’s multiple personal disorder in Me Myself and Irene (2000).
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(Penn was presumably hired to play Larry based on the singular hairdo that he sported throughout "Carlito's Way.")
The predilection for pure idiocy that runs through American culture has few finer exemplars than the Farrelly Brothers, Peter and Bobby, whose misshapen body of work includes "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb & Dumber."
Relying on the simple slapstick that characterized a variety of two-reel shorts, lasting 15-18 minutes, dating back to 1934-1946, by the manic comedic trio known as The Three Stooges, Peter and Bobby Farrelly (“Dumb & Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary”) have retained, revived and re-created their nostalgically amusing antics.
Though they may be best known for the R-rated "There's Something About Mary," there is a Stooge streak a mile long running through their work — the bumbling misfits with a heart of gold in their first film, "Dumb & Dumber," for starters.
My initial reaction couldn't have been far wrong, either, because I see that the writers and directors of "Dumb and Dumber," Peter and Bobby Farrelly, plan to do a film before long called, not surprisingly, "The Three Stooges."
A miscalculation of near epic proportions, The Three Stooges follows the title characters (Chris Diamantopoulos' Moe, Will Sasso's Curly, and Sean Hayes' Larry) as they embark on a quest to raise $830,000 to save their beloved orphanage - with their efforts eventually bringing them in contact with a slinky femme fatale (Sofia Vergara's Lydia), her inept lover (Craig Bierko's Mac), and the cast of Jersey Shore.
Veteran comedy filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly (Dumb & Dumber, There’s Something About Mary) have been talking about making a movie based on The Three Stooges for more than a decade, but as long-in-the-works dream projects go, it’s pretty anticlimactic.