Ellington

"The Three Stooges" promises nothing and provides less, but it is slap-me-silly funny. Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly from a script they wrote with Mike Cerrone, three knuckleheads try and raise $830,000 plus their "meels" to save the Sisters of Mercy orphanage.

This is the only home they've known, and while they are not popular with Sister Mary-Mengele (Larry David), the trio inspires Peezer (Max Charles), Murph (Avalon Robbins) and the other little orphans.

This is the kind of schmaltz where weak American tears might be shed if it was 1934, the year Columbia Pictures released the first short film of the stooges. Today's audience understands that a moronic story is the only place for Moe, Larry and Curly. We wouldn't want the story to upstage the actors.

For those wise guys who shamelessly "bash" this film (Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk) or complain that it's getting on their "noives," quit your "squawking"! It's easy to slough off the crudeness of the antics into the realm of dumb, dumber and dumbest, but the actors who play Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos), Larry (Sean Hayes) and Curly (Will Sasso) exhibit uninhibited action, perfect timing and seem to channel the original Moe Howard, Curly Howard and Larry Fine.

The three modern-day stooges are slapstick masters using technique as skillfully in an oddball fusion of karate masters with circus clowns. To come off looking as stupid and guileless as they do requires some smart direction from the Farrelly brothers.

This film is made up of an astonishing number of bits, sight gags and classic vaudevillian technique. Moe, Larry and Curly sing, and they do it without clunkers. The orphans sing, too, until Sister Mary-Mengele reins them in.

The sequences build to get laughs, hit the climax and then speed off to the next routine.

At times the action is so fast that it's like an adolescent stunt, carried out in a convulsive fit of spontaneity. You won't find static slowing things down, except every now and then with the plot, which is a bit thick. Every scene conveys motion—from eye pokes, to nose pulls to bonks on the head to three guys on a bike tailgating a car.

At the end of the film, the Farrelly brothers do a public service announcement, advising spectators that nothing in the film should be tried at home.

Everything in "The Three Stooges," like most Farrelly brothers creations, spoofs something sacred. Larry David plays Sister Mary-Mengele with earnest cross-dressing. Every scene with Sister Mary Mengele left me in stitches of laughter. One of the sisters bathes in a skimpy, wimpy one-piece, causing an outcry from the Roman Catholic Church. Lawyers take a bashing, as Moe's adoptive father is always looking for the next greatest lawsuit, whether it's against the orphanage or Super Cuts for some really bad hair.

It's difficult to explain what makes something funny, but there's something about physical farce and boisterous slapstick that crosses cultures. Italy has Commedia Dell' Arte, and we have vaudeville. But the vaudevillian tradition is withering on the vine of nostalgia, and when someone tries to resurrect it back into mainstream, it faces detractors who simply fail to understand the brilliance of idiocy.

I had a hoot of a time laughing at the sight gags as if I were 10 years old. The theater audience was, in fact, mostly made up of kids with their parents. At first I felt a little shy that I had no youngster to justify my presence, but we all laughed together. Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk. (Really, I can't stop saying this.)

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167643

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Why, you, I oughta...

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Belvedere

Date

2012-04-20T12:36:19-06:00