{"id":2728,"date":"2012-04-12T17:01:06","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T00:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2012-04-12T17:01:06","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T00:01:06","slug":"the-three-stooges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=2728","title":{"rendered":"The Three Stooges: As much fun as a Fake Slap in the Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhile the actual Three Stooges starred in numerous feature length films during their careers there is a reason they are only remembered for their nearly 200 shorts. It\u2019s because The Three Stooges brand of hyper-cartoon-violence is best kept in small doses, otherwise the constant smacking and slapping becomes soul-numbing. And that was when the masters were swinging the rubber mallets. <\/p>\n

Now imagine what its like when Three Chumps pretend to be The Three Stooges for 90 minutes\u2026 soul-numbing doesn\u2019t even touch it. <\/p>\n

Not that the actors tapped to play the fake Stooges are terrible at imitation. The one redeeming feature of \u201cThe Three Stooges\u201d is that Chris Diamantopoulous, Will Sasso and Sean Hayes do an admirable job but never really get past presenting caricatures of Moe, Curly and Larry. They sure know how to faux poke some eyeballs though.<\/p>\n

Maybe there would have been some hope if they had given the dupes something creative to do but instead of riffing on the concept like \u201cThe Brady Bunch Movie\u201d or the recent \u201c21 Jump Street\u201d did, the plot stays impossibly clich\u00e9d.
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\nThanks to a brief and flimsy origin plotline, we find out that when the boys were babies they were thrown from a car and abandoned at an orphanage. Funny, huh? It is at the orphanage that surprisingly unfunny nuns played by the usually hilarious Jane Lynch and Larry David raised them. Years pass and now the terrorizing young Stooges have become the terrorizing adult Stooges that our grandparents knew and love. <\/p>\n

Now here\u2019s the rub: The orphanage is going to close down unless our heroes can raise $830,000. John Belushi is rolling in his grave. Hell, Moe, Curly and Larry might even be doing somersaults in the Afterlife. Or at least the Curly Shuffle\u2026.<\/p>\n

This becomes typical \u201cfish out of water\u201d fare as the Stooges smash and bumble their way through the modern world. They get mixed up with the gorgeous but surprisingly unfunny Sofia Vergara (who is so good in \u201cModern Family\u201d but tries her hand at being a villain here and fails. Versatility is not a noun that shall be used in a sentence regarding Miss Vergara\u2019s acting prowess) while Moe has a brief stint on \u201cThe Jersey Shore\u201d. Two things on this point: 1) This is a ridiculous move as \u201cThe Three Stooges\u201d is going to seem incredibly dated (even more than it already is) in just a couple of years when \u201cThe Jersey Shore\u201d is a happily forgotten memory. And 2) If you are going to put a Stooge on a popular MTV show, why not \u201cJackass\u201d!!? At least what Knoxville and his merry band do to each other on camera owes a debt to the real Stooges. It\u2019s as if the minds behind this debacle refuse to get anything right.
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\nWe have the writing\/directing team, The Farrelly Brothers, to thank for this lazy film. They started their career so brilliantly with \u201cThere\u2019s Something about Mary\u201d and \u201cKingpin\u201d back in the 90\u2019s but in recent years their work has been getting regressively worse as \u201cThe Heartbreak Kid\u201d begat \u201cHall Pass\u201d which is followed by this junk. Can we now declare them creatively tapped out and move on? I think a sad, thoughtless movie like \u201cThe Three Stooges\u201d is evidence enough. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the actual Three Stooges starred in numerous feature length films during their careers there is a reason they are only remembered for their nearly 200 shorts. It\u2019s because The Three Stooges brand of hyper-cartoon-violence is best kept in small doses, otherwise the constant smacking and slapping becomes soul-numbing. And that was when the masters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4995,12080,14133,17864,22410,24294],"class_list":["post-2728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-curly","tag-larry","tag-moe","tag-sean-hayes","tag-the-three-stooges-2012","tag-will-sasso"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}