I did a double-take when I saw this. Manohla Dargis has tagged the new "Three
Stooges" movie as a "NY Times' Critic's Pick." I've never met a woman who
likes the Stooges, so to see one in print is surprising. (Full review below.)
The actor who plays Curly also got special raves. The film, coming from the
increasingly tame Farrelly Brothers, is also rated PG. -d.
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012 - MOVIE REVIEW
A
NYT Critics' Pick
Wry and Subtle Jesting? Not Here, Knucklehead
"The Three Stooges,"
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Every straight man has a stooge — Abbott had Costello, Crosby had Hope —
the foil, the fool, the flunky, the goat.
But for much of their career, after
splitting from a famous straight man, the Three Stooges had only one another to
kick and slap around.
Beginning in the 1930s these
immortal three ran amok for decades in some 200 short films, busting guts and
raking in cash.
Now, with stupidity a proud
national pastime on the boob tube and off, the moment is ripe for a nyuk-nyuk
revival, starting with "The Three Stooges: The Movie," Peter and
Bobby Farrelly's thoroughly enjoyable paean to Moe, Larry and Curly and the art
of the eye poke.
Set in the present, the movie is a
fictionalized origin story about three sort-of-lovable fools who could be known
as Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest, as Peter Farrelly originally pitched the movie.
It's a perfect fit for the
Farrellys, who have made a career out of idiocy in comedies like
"Kingpin" and have recently stumbled with duds like "The
Heartbreak Kid."
Written by the Farrellys and Mike
Cerrone, "The Three Stooges" imagines a once-upon-an-orphanage time
when three babies are tossed out of a speeding car at the feet of a nun whose
name, Sister Mary-Mengele (Larry David in a habit and snarl), announces that
the filmmakers won't be soft-pedaling their shtick.
The nun's name proves something of
a bait and switch because Sister Mary-Mengele turns out to be the most
gleefully offensive jape in a movie that's more sweet than sour. That's par for
the course for the Farrellys, whose vulgarity has always been leavened by their
sense of decency and too frequently undermined by their sentimentalism.
Even so, while "The Three
Stooges" has a few aww moments, as might be expected given that it's
partly set in an orphanage, and although the Farrellys go soft on the Stooges'
relationships, the filmmakers never lose sight of the crude comedy that
inspired them. The Stooges' bonds of brotherhood may be strong, but they're
ties forged by a choreographed roundelay of resonant whacks and other instances
of extreme discipline and punishment.
The unabashedly creaky story,
divided into "episodes," follows the Stooges from infancy through
childhood to nominal adulthood. By the time they're grown, physically if not in
any other way, Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos), Larry (Sean Hayes) and Curly (Will
Sasso) are forced to try and save the orphanage from the bad economy and other
calamities.
Sent out into the world by the
Mother Superior (Jane Lynch) with some cash and no worldly experience, the
Stooges land first in an anonymous city and then in a noir intrigue with a
femme fatale, Lydia (Sofia Vergara), and her lover, Mac (Craig Bierko). Trouble
ensues along with a lion, a bear (oh my), the handsome guy from the Old Spice
commercials (Isaiah Mustafa) and, in a sharp, funny stroke, some of the cast
from "Jersey Shore."
The Farrellys don't overtly mock
the "Shore" personalities; there's no need for them to work that
hard. Like some other reality TV stars (the Bravo housewives come to mind),
characters like Snooki have assumed the function of a new kind of stooge.
In vaudeville the stooge's
traditional role was to give the comic something to work off of, a straight
line or a bit of business. The stooge tripped, acted silly, feigned being
foolish.
The new stooge does pretty much the
same thing, the difference being that reality-television celebrities have
turned their lives (or some weird approximation of life) into vaudeville. Of
course there's stupid and there's stupid, and the real Stooges, like the actors
playing them in this movie, were performing dumbness, which pretty much seems
the point here.
And the three leads in "The
Three Stooges" play dumb very well, particularly Mr. Sasso.
He beautifully captures Curly's
facial contortions and vocalizations — woo-woo-woo — and, as important, the
delicate physicality, the fluttering fingers and flapping feet.
Topped with Moe's bowl cut, Mr.
Diamantopoulos bunches his face into a fist and hits his lines like a speed bag
("whatsthemattawithyou?"), while Mr. Hayes, crowned with Larry's
tragically balding Afro and at times sounding like Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion,
seems to have more to do than the original Stooge ever did.
As usual the Farrellys give this
movie about as much visual style as you'd find in a Stooges two-reeler, but, as
with the original films, you may be too busy watching and laughing at Moe,
Larry and Curly to care.
At their best the Farrellys' movies
exult in the stupid and the profane as a means of liberation, including from
good taste, even if their characters tend to put away their freak flags at the
end, often in the interest of a normalizing romance.
Much of the pleasure in "The
Three Stooges" comes from watching and hearing (the boings and thumps are
terrific) grown men smack each other silly in Rube Goldberg-like formations and
without suffering so much as a single black eye, enduring psychological damage
or, as bad, being forced to change.
Like Wile E. Coyote and those
inflatable clowns that bounce back after every punch, the Three Stooges take
plenty of hits but keep on coming.
They are, as the Farrellys
understand, testaments to human resilience, one slap and tickle at a time.
"The Three Stooges" is rated PG. (Parental guidance suggested) but
unwarranted.
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