The Three Stooges

A miscalculation of near epic proportions, The Three Stooges follows the title characters (Chris Diamantopoulos’ Moe, Will Sasso’s Curly, and Sean Hayes’ Larry) as they embark on a quest to raise $830,000 to save their beloved orphanage – with their efforts eventually bringing them in contact with a slinky femme fatale (Sofia Vergara’s Lydia), her inept lover (Craig Bierko’s Mac), and the cast of Jersey Shore. It’s clear immediately that filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel here, as the movie, for the most part, presents the Stooges as they’ve always been – which, while admirable in its way, ultimately highlights just how irrelevant these characters have become in the decades since their 1934 debut. There is, as such, little doubt that The Three Stooges has been suffused with one stale, hopelessly unfunny bit after another, with the movie’s almost shocking dearth of laughs effectively highlighting the various deficiencies within the Farrellys’ pervasively lackluster screenplay. (It is, for example, difficult to see the humor in an obnoxiously prolonged sequence involving baby urine.) And although Diamantopoulos, Sasso, and Hayes are fine and competent in their respective roles, The Three Stooges, which eventually morphs into a fairly intolerable and endless piece of work, utterly fails in its efforts at bringing the Stooges into the 21st century and it’s finally impossible to envision even their most ardent fans finding much here worth embracing.

* out of ****