A dull, listless remake that at least has its heart in the right place, "The Three Stooges" may have made my kids crack up, but mostly left me scratching my head wondering why I was watching this dreck.
There's nothing particularly egregious about this feature film version of the classic Stooges, but the biggest question I have after seeing it is: "Why bother?"
It is a well-trod path that brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly are on, taking a "Beverly Hillbillies" tack by reimagining Moe (Chris Diamantopolos), Larry (Sean Hayes) and Curly (Will Sasso) as products of an orphanage who have to save their home (and the children in it) from foreclosure.
Yes, that's the reaction I had, too.
The comedy is classic Stooges, which is to say numerous raps to the head with hammers, fists to the gut and pratfalls aplenty. None of this is as imaginative as anything the original Moe, Larry, Shemp, and Curly Joe came up with decades ago. The best I can say for it is it's a faithful adaptation, which is to say the majority of the jokes fall flat.
There's a silly subplot involving Sophia Vergara (TV's "Modern Family") as a femme fatale who is trying to off her husband (Kirby Heyborne), who has a special connection to the boys. Vergara has one heck of a crappy remake double feature with this and "The Smurfs."
Other notables include Jane Lynch (TV's "Glee"), Jennifer Hudson and Stephen Collins, who all collect a paycheck but come and go mostly without incident.
The Stooges themselves do a good enough impression of the originals, with Hayes especially acquitting himself well as Larry Fine (though they are never given proper last names).
The film's two funniest bits are Larry David as a nun at the Stooges orphanage and an end-of-film disclaimer from "Peter and Bobby Farrelly," played straightfaced by two good-looking, muscular guys, warning kids not to repeat the stunts they just saw on screen and showing how the hammers-to-the-skull and eye pokes were all fake. It serves both as a PC sign of the times (somehow, three generations managed to survive without such warnings) and a nice jab at the studio/powers-that-be who obviously mandated such a warning.
It's perhaps predictable that I would call this movie sophomoric, but that's giving "Stooges" too much credit. Freshmanic, perhaps? It's a harmless film with no real reason for existence and mostly gets me wondering what the Farrellys originally envisioned back when Sean Penn was going to play Larry, Benicio del Toro was attached as Moe, and Jim Carrey was going to put on 50 pounds to play Curly.
You can bet it's a far cry from what we eventually got.