I’ve never been a fan of The Three Stooges, but I can appreciate their particular brand of slapstick as a genuine artform. Back in the ’30s and ’40s, they were crafting a new level of comedy, and some would argue that it holds up, even today.
Moe, Larry and Curly obviously made a major impact on Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the filmmakers behind There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber, their fandom driving the duo to spend a better part of a decade attempting to mount a modern feature film version of the Stooges. Now we have our first glimpse at the fruit of their labor.
And it is terrifying.
If The Three Stooges only kinda sorta worked for you in its original form, the Farrelly’s The Three Stooges is the cinematic equivalent of fingernails sliding down a chalkboard. If you were a fan, hopefully there’s something here that floats your boat. It’s actually astonishing how the classic shtick completely doesn’t work in the stylistic confines of a Hollywood movie. To be fair, stars Will Sasso, Sean Hayes and Chris Diamantopoulos (who replaced Jim Carrey, Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn) nail their counterparts, but they can’t save the half-baked jokes from missing the mark.Oh, and then Snooki shows up to give you non-Stooge-related reason to fear for your brain’s safety.
Who knows, maybe The Three Stooges won’t actually be a forceful, 90-minute poke to the eyes, but this first spot doesn’t give any evidence to support that wishful thinking. See for yourself by checking out the trailer below or in HD over at Apple.
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