New To Blu: The Three Stooges
I remember as a child staying up every Friday night to catch Comedy Classics at midnight. For a few months, they would play The Three Stooges. Once they ran out of Stooges shorts, they would rotate to Laurel and Hardy. To say I was a fan of The Three Stooges would be a major understatement. I've seen every bit they ever produced ten times over and even watched all their outrageous movies over and over again. Yes, I even enjoyed the stuff with Curly Joe.
The modernized version of The Three Stooges is actually an extremely faithful adaptation of the Stooges wit and violent humor. While it's not quite as funny, the film takes the source material very seriously and delivers the closest rendition I could possibly hope for. The casting is perfect and the comedic material is presented straight out of the Stooges book of numb skull humor. However, there is one big problem.
When The Three Stooges were first introduced to audiences, their type of humor was over the top and the violence towards each other was shocking. In this day and age, the eye pokings and hammer beatings seem cruel and completely out of place. I understand that this is the basis for the Stooges brand of comedy, but I hoped they had found a way to modernize the characters a bit while toning down the infliction of pain on one another. Or maybe I'm just old.
As a Three Stooges movie, the Farrelly Brothers made something that absolutely holds true to the original comedy shorts. However, their schtick doesn't hold up well in the era of internet bullying, school shootings and reality TV.