The Three Stooges
Tagline: Just Say Moe.
There’s a fairly funny joke going around which basically goes like this: Who’s looking forward to The Three Stooges? Fans of Jack and Jill. In case you’re unaware, Adam Sandler’s “comedy” topped many critics’ worst-of lists (including this very publication) and there isn’t much hope being held out for The Three Stooges, directed (perhaps with a sense of weary inevitability) by the Farrelly Brothers.
The film marries the old with the new. Left on a nun’s doorstep, Larry (Sean Hayes), Curly (Will Sasso) and Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) grow up doing all the things you love them for: finger-poking, nyuk-nyuking and getting into all kinds of trouble. But when they try to save their childhood home, they somehow become involved in a murder plot while stumbling into an incredibly successful reality TV show.
But what do three critics make of it? Roger Ebert gets straight down to business: “I didn’t laugh much.” The AV Club isn’t much more positive, saying that “The Three Stooges isn’t very funny, but it is, like last year’s far superior The Muppets, a sincere act of fandom on an epic scale.” But the McClatchy-Tribune News Service is considerably more upbeat, noting that “The Farrellys, who have fallen off raunchy comedy’s cutting edge in recent years, manage the right tone.”
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