For good or ill, the new and updated Three Stooges movie premiers this weekend.
Hollywood loves jumping on the bandwagon, so if
this movie is even a moderate box office hit then I predict filmmakers will start
scrambling to recreate other comedy teams from the past.
In
the next year or so expect to see films starring the all new Marx
Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Hope and Crosby,The Ritz Brothers,
Allen and Rossi and any others they can think of.
Well, here it is: the official first trailer for the Farrelly Brothers' upcoming Three Stooges movie.
As a lifelong Stooges fan, I've been watching the development of this project for quite some time with a mixture of both fascination and horror. I was sure they were going to try and update the Stooges for modern audiences and insert tons of fart, sex and drug jokes into the movie. After seeing the trailer my fears have been somewhat allayed.
I still don't think the world needs a remake of the Three Stooges, but this trailer isn't the worst thing I've ever seen.
They've certainly got the look and feel of the Stooges down pat. Chris Diamantopoulos is positively eerie as Moe. The voice, the mannerisms, even his facial expressions– it's all absolutely perfect. It's like Moe Howard time-traveled to 2011. Sean Hayes does a pretty darn good Larry as well, which is quite a feat. Lots of people can imitate Moe and Curly, but getting Larry's raspy slur down is a lot tougher. And Will Sasso seems like he was born to play Curly.
That said, I'm still not totally sold on the remake. The trailer made me chuckle a couple of times, but the parts I laughed at were things the original Stooges always did. Eye pokes and hits to the head, that sort of thing. It's not enough to just recreate the Stooges, they need to bring something new to the table. Otherwise, what's the point of a remake?
Then there are the Jersey Shore cameos. They absolutely MUST go. Oh, I get why they're in there. The studio thinks the kids of today won't be interested in a remake of some old comedy team, so they're shoehorning Snooki and the rest of her detestable castmates into the proceedings to draw them in. In reality all this will do is ensure that the film is dated before it even comes out. Five years from now you'll be able to look at this movie and pinpoint the exact day and date that it premiered.
If the studio is smart they'll release the DVD with a special option that will skip over the Shore cast cameos.
Anyway, I feel a little bit better about the movie after seeing the trailer. I'm upgrading my rating from Outright Disaster to Mild Debacle.
After what seems like eons, the Farrelly Brothers (the There's Something About Mary guys) finally revealed an official cast photo from their upcoming Three Stooges movie, due in theaters next year. As a life-long Stooges fan, I've been following the progress of this movie with a mixture of fascination and outright horror for years. It's been in development for a good decade, no exaggeration. A veritable truckload of actors have been attached to the project at some point or another. At one time the cast was going to be Benecio Del Torro as Moe, Sean Penn (!) as Larry, and Jim Carrey as Curly, who reportedly was willing to gain fifty pounds for the role. Finally the official cast has been nailed down and filming is finally underway: Will Sasso (MadTV) as Curly, Chris Diamantopoulos (whoever that is) as Moe, and Sean Hays (Will & Grace) as Larry. I'll give credit where credit is due: they certainly have the look of the Stooges down, although Larry looks disturbingly like a close relative of freakish prop-comic Carrot Top in the photo above. Looks aside though, I just don't see how this can possibly work. The movie will reportedly be broken up into three half hour shorts, similar to the Stooge films of yore. But— and here's the part that worries me— they're updating it to the present day. That means plenty of drug, sex and fart jokes will no doubt abound, something that, in my opinion, doesn't belong in the Stooge Universe (Stoogiverse?). Also troubling are reports of cameo appearances by the cast of Jersey Shore, which dates the movie before it even comes out. I would rather watch a continuous loop of Nazis burning puppies alive than watch even ten seconds of even one of the Jersey Shore cretins. Who knows, though? Maybe the Stooge movie will surprise me and it'll actually turn out well. The Stooges first became popular way back at the height of the Great Depression. The country's deep in the crapper of another Depression again, so maybe the Stooges are just what we need.
