I am a die-hard Stooges fan. I grew up watching the original Stooges with my old man. Holidays were often filled with Stooges marathons. When I moved off to college, I continued the tradition. I didn’t sit in my apartment on New Year’s Day watching football – I was watching the Stooges marathon. Because of my nostalgia-filled love for everything Larry, Moe and Curly (not Shemp), I had hoped that this long awaited slapstick revival would be worth watching. But alas, it most definitely is not.
There are two major problems with The Movie – first, it doesn’t do a single thing that wasn’t done better in the originals. Why watch a color-filled shiny new version of The Stooges when you can watch old ones that are done much better? Second, while the Stooges themselves are exactly as you would remember them, the world they exist within is not. No, for this remake they live in our world and the two don’t mix well at all. Let me give you a spoilerific example. In The Movie, Moe is cast as the newest addition to The Jersey Shore. Trying to update The Stooges in modern pop culture is worst idea possible. The Three Stooges are pop culture in their own right. Mixing them with the worst of today’s pop culture is a shameless bastardization.
I wanted to love The Movie, but ended up loathing it. A few things made me smile – like the actors playing The Stooges, a few old-school gags and stunts and Larry David playing a harsh nun – but not enough to ever make me want to watch it again. Being a fan of the classics, am I glad that I saw the new movie? Yes – but only to see for myself how bad it could be. If anything, it made want to race home and pop in my old Stooges VHS tapes, which is always a good thing.
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
