The plot, such as it is, rests on a Catholic orphanage where
the three little stooges were dropped off and subsequently raised. The patient
nuns are the very funny Jane Lynch, Oscar-winning American Idol alum Jennifer Hudson, who gets a short musical
number, Sports Illustrated’s latest
swimsuit issue cover girl Kate Upton, and Larry David. Yes, that Larry David.
They’re exasperated with the guys’ antics, but somehow, twenty-five years later,
the guys are still hanging around. The Farrellys don’t really care to explain exactly
why the guys are such weird anachronisms right out of the womb, leading to a
sometimes off-putting mix of contemporary references and moments when the
Stooges are utterly dumbfounded by modernity. What’s going on here? They have
no clue what an iPhone is, but they know who C-3PO is? You just have to throw
up your hands and go with it.
What’s especially surprising, and makes it easier to just go
along with the movie’s silliness, is how skillfully the main cast inhabits the
roles of the Stooges. At first, they seem to be ever so slightly not quite
right, but as the movie went on I grew accustomed to them. They’re doing
admirable work in a tough spot. Sean Hayes plays Larry with a scrunched up face
and drawn out delivery while Chris Diamantopoulos squints and schemes from
beneath a flat, black mop of hair as Moe. Meanwhile, Will Sasso delivers a
pitch-perfect Curly, wiggling his bulk around with squirmy grace and fluidity
while manipulating his voice with a squeaky falsetto. In other words, they’re
the Stooges. They smack each other around with exaggerated sound effects and
bumble through life spreading (somewhat unintentional) destruction, much to the
consternation of those around them.
When the events of the plot finally kick into motion, it’s
revealed that the orphanage is over $800,000 dollars in debt. The trio decides
to set off to raise the money and save the orphans. (That one cute little
orphan is also sick with a mysterious disease may be a bit too nakedly
manipulative and heavy for such an otherwise bouncy lark.) It’s a fairly dusty
premise, which only adds to the sense that the movie has been sucked through a
hole in the space-time continuum and arrived at just the right speed and
location to smack me upside the head. I sat dumbfounded as often as I was
amused. It’s all just so straight-ahead slapstick and brightly lit episodic
tomfoolery. The Farrellys can’t indulge in their usual R-rated sight gags, but
that’s no loss here, since that’s not their intent. Besides, there are plenty
of icky moments, like a scene in a nursery with urinating infants, or a scene
in which a lion is hit in
the boing-loings by a peanut shot out of a dolphin’s blowhole. There’s
definitely a creeping sense of the surreal here. Some of it works, some of it
doesn’t.
As the movie goes this way and that, sorting itself into
three loose episodes differentiated by titles in the style of the old Stooges’
shorts, the Farrellys find plenty more hoary old story elements to utilize.
There’s a cartoonish femme fatale (Sophia Vergara) involved in a murder plot
that ropes in the Stooges and runs throughout the remainder of the film,
though, given how much punishment these characters take without consequence,
it’s an oddly low-stakes murder plot. There’s also a smarmy lawyer (Stephen
Collins) and his slightly dimwitted son (Kirby Heyborne), not to mention a
goofy thug (Craig Bierko), bumbling cops, a stern nurse, and a party full of
snooty rich people and other eccentric types including a thickly accented
French baker.
It’s a movie in which most jokes, simply by the nature of
the story and the caricatures, can be seen coming from a mile away. Sometimes,
these jokes just aren’t very funny and yet when they land, they land hard. When
they did, I found myself laughing despite myself. A fairly early sequence that
builds with exceptional escalation starts with the Stooges trying to fix a
church steeple and culminates in a church bell sliding down and smacking a nun
in head. Moe wonders who their victim was. Curly squeaks, “I dunno, but her
face rings a bell!”
There’s something sort of sweet about the way the Farrellys
pay tribute to the Stooges, in its own way like what Jason Segel and company
did with The Muppets. For me, a
little Three Stooges goes a long way whether they be new or old, but the enthusiasm
of this movie is borderline contagious. The Farrelly brothers lovingly recreate
the kind of slapdash, repetitive, hit-and-miss silliness of the Three Stooges
while trying to say that the world today could use some good, uncomplicated
pratfalls and broad wordplay now and then. An extended goofy plot point in the
middle of the movie finds Moe accidentally becoming the newest cast member of Jersey Shore. It’s an odd moment – one
that feels miscalculated and stale already – but it also serves as the film’s
statement of purpose of sorts. As Moe smacks around these tanned, shallow,
callow reality show stars, I could almost hear the Farrellys arguing that the popular
shallow of old beats the popular shallow of today any day.
