Can ‘Stooges’ shtick play in modern day? Soitenly!
Film looks for fresh laughs while paying tribute to pratfalling trio
Weep not, for they live again. Like ghosts from Saturday-morning TV marathons past, three familiar figures jump out from a row of bushes and materialize poolside in the steamy mid-july heat. One sports a distinctive bowl cut, another wears a corona of wild frizz, and the chubby fellow is as bald as a bikini-waxed peach.
Near a building that bears the sign Sisters of Mercy Orphanage & Spa, a ballistic ballet of comic bedlam unfolds: a face is slapped, a cranium is conked, clumps of hair are yanked by the fistful and the epithet “You idiot!” resounds throughout the movie set in suburban Atlanta.
Yes, Moe, Larry and Curly have returned to “woo, woo, woo” and “nyuk-nyuk-nyuk” another day in The Three Stooges: The Movie, opening Friday.
Those Hollywood knuckleheads known as Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the proudly lowbrow filmmaking siblings who channeled the anarchic spirit of the Stooges in such hits as Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, have made it their mission to resurrect this unholy trinity of vaudeville-bred clowns for a new generation.
Just don’t expect a backstage biopic of brothers Moe and Curly Howard, who with pal Larry Fine made up the trio’s most popular lineup in the 1930s and ’40s and were responsible for more than half of the 190 Stooges theatrical shorts.
Explains Chris Diamantopoulos ( 24, Up All Night), who doles Phil: “Quick! What is the trick to those fake tears?” Luke: “The Three Stooges are all dead.” Phil: “Yeah, that’s good.” — A recent father-son exchange on TV’S Modern Family
out the punishment as scowling Moe alongside Sean Hayes ( Will & Grace) as middleman Larry and Will Sasso ( MADTV) as childlike Curly: “This isn’t my interpretation of Moe. I am playing Moe. The Farrellys didn’t want our version of Moe, Larry and Curly. Their objective from Day One was that the movie would be hilarious and authentic to their style of humor and get kids to laugh at this level again.”
The Farrellys have stuck by their pet project since 1996. Along the way, the idea was hatched to do a feature-length re-creation of the Stooges in a modern-day setting by stringing together three 20-minute shorts into a narrative. The plot — the three grown-up foundlings try to raise enough cash to save the orphanage — sounds like The Blues Brothers minus the classic soul music. But the action onscreen is classic Stoogery.
Will slapstick tickle today?
It was anything but an easy sell, especially without name stars as leads. “We took it around to a lot of places,” says Peter Farrelly, 55. Both Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, the Stooges’ home studio, turned them down. “I’ve been on my knees in front of Tom Cruise, saying, ‘Tom, you got to produce this thing, I’m telling you.’ ”
Adds Bobby Farrelly, 53, who can’t resist a joke: “You were just praying on your knees, right?”
Clarifies Peter: “Yeah, that’s right. I was praying.”
Many studio execs felt the premise was dated. In the end, it was a test film with the current cast that persuaded 20th Century Fox to pay an estimated $35 million for the movie.
The question remains: Will youngsters who don’t know Shemp from Curly Joe (both subs for Curly, who had a severe stroke in 1946 and died at age 48 in 1952) respond to the sight of middle-aged men behaving like bumbling fools?
“They may not go ‘Oh, yeah, I remember the Stooges,’ ” Bobby Farrelly says. “But they are for kids anyway, even if kids aren’t familiar with the old Stooges. The comedy plays right into their wheelhouse.”
Turns out, his and his brother’s instincts might be correct if audience reactions at screenings are any measure. The crowdpleaser so far? A faceoff in a hospital maternity ward that finds our heroes using baby boys as human squirt guns — their modesty kept intact, although dirty diapers do take flight.
“Little kids who are 3, 4 and 5 are on the floor,” Peter reported last week. “Children lose their minds. Adults like it, too. But it’s funnier for kids.”
But he assures that the brothers have adjusted their taste levels to match the Stooges’ more innocent approach to humor rather than dragging them down to their level.
The last time the Stooges experienced a surge of popularity was in the early ’80s, when they received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the novelty song The Curly Shuffle caught on, says Greg Lenburg, 56, co-author (with twin brother Jeff and Moe’s daughter, Joan Howard Maurer) of a new edition of the 30-year-old The Three Stooges Scrapbook. As he observes: “Hardly a day goes by when you don’t hear their name get dropped.” That includes political debate, of course.
Defining the Stooges as living cartoons who get smacked and then get right back up, brother Jeff considers their humor more timeless than such contemporaries as Abbott and Costello. “They deal with social ills and issues in their films,” he says. “Everyday things like plumbing or how they were suspicious of high society.” Both Lenburgs, however, have mixed feelings about the Farrelly-ized update.
“I’m a little leery,” Jeff says. “The one movie that was similar was The Little Rascals from 1994. That was pretty painful. I’m not saying this will be like that. Just that there is trepidation among loyalists.”
Even Dylan’s a fan
Boomers such as the Rhode Island-raised Farrellys, who religiously watched the Stooges after school on Boston TV, remain the most steadfast fans. Even some celebrities have confessed their allegiance to the trio.
Take Bob Dylan, who has revealed himself to be a 70year-old Stooge-aholic.
“We love Bob Dylan,” Peter Farrelly says. “We contacted his people to use one of his songs, and turns out he is a big Stooges fan.” Which is how his Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues ended up on the film’s soundtrack.
The Farrellys are worried that the heroes of their adolescence might just fade away without a big-screen revival.
“My daughter, Apple, who is 11, has friends who aren’t aware of them,” Peter says. Part of the brothers’ own dedication is to acknowledge the artistic contributions of the Stooges and what they stood for.
“We always felt the Stooges were never given the treatment they deserved,” Peter says. “They were decidedly Class B. The Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy were Class A. They only were allowed to headline feature films very late in their career in the ’60s, when it was all but over. It irritates us when the purists out there go, ‘How dare you remake the Three Stooges?’
“I feel they will be looking down on us with smiles,” especially since the Farrellys made sure to inject some heartwarming emotion amid the honks emitted from the squeezed bosom belonging to Sofia Vergara of Modern Family.
Perhaps the most open-minded person is Maurer, 85, whose granddaughter Caroline ( who also happens to be Moe’s greatgranddaughter) plays one of the nuns.
Judging from the trailers, Maurer — who was invited to the premiere — says: “I thought they had the moves down. In certain instances, I thought I caught a glimpse of my dad.”
She is pleased that at least in some way, her father’s legacy is being carried on in a featurelength movie. “He was extremely — I don’t want to say jealous — upset that Abbott and Costello did features and studio chief Harry Cohn only allowed the Stooges to do shorts because he made so much money off them. Deep down, my dad would have loved to have been a dramatic actor. For him, this is an honor.”