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The Three Stooges

Yay!

8 votes

Nay!

2 votes

Indifferent

10 votes

d'Kong76 Sep 28 2013 10:18 AM

[youtube:1yepkfqo]cJD-gVBbkf0[/youtube:1yepkfqo]

Benjamin Grimm Sep 28 2013 10:19 AM Re: The Three Stooges

Was never a fan of theirs. I'm more of a Marx Brothers guy. But I also prefer Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello to the Stooges.

Ashie62 Sep 28 2013 10:45 AM Re: The Three Stooges

The Stooges took a stand against Hitler before many...

Zvon Sep 28 2013 12:34 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Always been a big Stooges fan growing up. They were always on TV. As I got older I realized I was more a Curly fan that a Stooge fan. These days I'll watch a short if Curlys in it. Otherwise I don't. I bet I've seen em all.

seawolf17 Sep 28 2013 12:51 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Never got into them, with one specific exception: [youtube:29puwq55]mBiHysKnvGs[/youtube:29puwq55] I would buy season tickets if they brought this back to Citi.

Frayed Knot Sep 28 2013 01:29 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Mostly indifferent as I never watched them all that much. When I did see them I was never of the mind to say; "how can anybody watch this mindless shit?", but I also wasn't drawn to watch more.

dgwphotography Sep 28 2013 02:20 PM Re: The Three Stooges

seawolf17 wrote: Never got into them, with one specific exception: [youtube]mBiHysKnvGs[/youtube] I would buy season tickets if they brought this back to Citi. They should lose Sweet Caroline and Takin' Care of Business, and bring this back

themetfairy Sep 28 2013 02:22 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Sweet Caroline is lost. Except for the All Star Game, it hasn't been around for years.

Mets – Willets Point Sep 28 2013 07:46 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Was never a fan of theirs. I'm more of a Marx Brothers guy. But I also prefer Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello to the Stooges. I second this.

Edgy MD Sep 28 2013 08:05 PM Re: The Three Stooges

The guys I knew who were into them --- I wasn't into those guys. There seemed to be some sort of anxiety to find a way to reboot the Stooges (and the Marx Brothers for that matter) for my generation back in the seventies. Hanna-Barbera created a show featuring the Stooges as robots, and they signed Joe Besser himself to voice the character of Babu the Screwup Genie in the animated series Jeannie, loosely based on I Dream of Jeannie. On the Marx Brothers front, they billed the less-than-hilarious Hudson Brothers as the "Marx Brothers of Rock," and Chico Marx's grandson (and Harpo lookalike) played third base for The Bad News Bears. So I was suspicious of both teams. (The Stooges and the Marxes, not the Bears.) When I finally came around to seeing what the fuss is about, I got the Marxies and their perverted subversion, but the Stooges seemed mostly like empty calories. I guess I liked the ones with Shemp or Besser just because it seemed fun to see them try and force hilarity out of a situation when the elephant in the room is the absent star. Sort of like the strange appeal to watching Taxi after Alex left or Welcome Back, Kotter without Barbarino. Even with the Marxes, I always enjoy seeing them somehow try and make Zeppo part of the act when he doesn't quite fit in. I think he works sort of like Lily Munster, as the non-crazy member of the crazy clan, who somehow seems normal except for an inability to see the abnormality of the rest of the group.

Benjamin Grimm Sep 28 2013 08:52 PM Re: The Three Stooges

You mean Marilyn Munster, but I get your point. There are a lot of other examples of the one normal person playing straight among a group of crazy people. Bob Newhart was one who did that very well.

vtmet Sep 29 2013 05:26 PM Re: The Three Stooges

stupid but funny...better than watching crap like Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, Will Farrell and Adam Sandler; but I would much prefer the comedy of Get Smart, Happy Days, I Dream of Jeannie, Hogans Heroes, Gulligan's Island, Dick Van Dyke, Abbott & Costello, and Laurel & Hardy... I gave them a moderate "yeah"...but only reason why I have watched them at all in the past 20 years is because my one daughter loved watching their old shows on TNT...

Edgy MD Sep 29 2013 07:09 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Benjamin Grimm wrote: You mean Marilyn Munster, but I get your point. There are a lot of other examples of the one normal person playing straight among a group of crazy people. Bob Newhart was one who did that very well. Marilyn. D'oh.

d'Kong76 Sep 29 2013 07:29 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Marilyn was the weird one on that show.

themetfairy Sep 29 2013 07:35 PM Re: The Three Stooges

No, Marilyn was the plain one!

d'Kong76 Sep 29 2013 07:47 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Was joking ... I loved that show. Have the first season on dvd.

Fman99 Sep 29 2013 07:55 PM Re: The Three Stooges

People getting brained all of the time is funny. Pro-Stooge.

Vic Sage Sep 29 2013 11:04 PM Re: The Three Stooges

when my daughter was 8 and my son 5, i bought all the Curly episodes as a video collection on eBay and raised my kids on them. I tried Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Bros, L&H, A&C on them, but the only ones they'd watch were the Stooges. Like the Marx Bros, the stooges were all relatives (brothers and a cousin) and the family dynamic underpinning both teams made them more interesting to me than the strange creepy inexplicable friendships of L&H and A&C. why were they together? With the stooges, you didn't have to explain it or think about it. They were family... that's all you needed to know. Even the Marx Bros played down the familial connection, often playing characters who are just meeting each other and often working at cross purposes. But the Stooges were a family, trying to make a buck, keep a job, marry some girls, go into the jungle or the wild west, or pretending to be doctors, or exterminators, or whatever. They were too stupid to ever succeed, but they didn't know that and their exuberant confidence and can-do spirit in the face of inevitable failure made them funny, and a little sad. Curly was a savant. He was childlike, animalistic at times, just barely human, but with a sweetness that was palpable. Larry was the sniveling sidekick and wisenheimer who knew he'd get his brillo hair yanked if he made a smartass remark to Moe, but couldn't help himself. And then there was Moe... the big brother with the plan, who was no smarter than the other two, but thought he was. He kept his brothers in line with ... well, lets call it a sharp form of discipline. That violence is what most people think of when they think of the Stooges, and in later years became controversial with modern parents who didn't think physical abuse was funny. But it was. It was because it was brothers roughhousing with no actual consequences, and so all that needed to be concerned with was the physics of objects in motion. The accumulation of physical calamity is the basis of classical farce, and it is the basis of Stooge humor. One action causing another causing another, in a chain of cause and effect -- slapping, punching, kicking, hairpulling, nose-yanking, eye-gouging, foot stomping, anvil dropping, bed-collapsng, boat-sinking, needle-stabbing... actions that defy laws of physical reality in order to elicit a laugh, just like the silent shorts of Keaton or the WB cartoons that followed. Were the plots ridiculous? of course, but that was always sort of the point. production values? acting? dialogue? pedestrian, at best. But so what? Objects in space, objects in motion. Biff Bam Boom. But not just that. They were brothers acting like brothers -- abusing each other but ultimately supporting each other -- living and working together in hopeless pursuit of a success that will never come, never seeing the bowling ball about to fall on their heads...followed by another, and then another, and yet another. Other slapstick practitioners might've thought one ball would be enough, but the boys knew better. After Curly died and Shemp returned to the act (he was with them originally in vaudeville, before Curly), they kept regurgitating the same gags and plots, but Shemp was no Curly. There was no sweet soul anymore, no "Harpo", to balance out Moe's bile, and Shemp was just a reminder of Curly's absence. Joe Besser followed Shemp and Joe DeRita ("Curly Joe") followed Besser, on a downhill slope through the 1950s. But for over a decade (1934-46), the boys churned out shorts at an alarming rate and were paid a pittance for their trouble, despite the fact that their shorts were more popular than the Columbia features they preceded. Of all the comedy teams of the sound era, only the Marx Bros were better (adding verbal wit to the physical comedy). But the Stooges never stuck a pointless romance and musical number in the middle of THEIR stories. A PLUMBING THEY WILL GO came on tv recently and i was watching it, and my daughter walked in. Now 16, she will hardly watch anything with me anymore, our tastes having diverged dramatically since she was 8. But she sat down and watched it with me for the 100th time, still laughing at the same moments we always did. So, no, i really don't think the boys did her any harm, and she never poked her brother in the eye... on purpose. Nyuk nyuk nyuk...

RealityChuck Sep 30 2013 01:26 PM Re: The Three Stooges

The Stooges were uneven. At their best (A Plumbing We Will Go, Three Little Pirates, You Nazty Spy, Men in Black), they were geniuses of violent slapstick, especially when Del Lord directed them. At their worst (usually with Jules White directing), they were not particularly good. They made a ton of shorts (190 IIRC), so there were a lot of bad ones, but enough good ones to make them worthwhile. Once Curly had to leave, things went downhill. Shemp was talented, but the scripts weren't there (or recycled). Joe Besser was a disastrous choice, though even the best possible person would not have helped, since short subjects were dying at the time. Joe DeRita was a slight step up (he, at least, knew what it meant to be a Stooge), but Besser had more talent and by the time they were in features, their best days were long past. Good rule of thumb: if the theme music is "Three Blind Mice," it's less likely to be good than if it's "Listen to the Mockingbird." The Stooges were also very good verbal comedians, which is sometimes overlooked. Some of their routines ("Slowly I turn"* "Ma-ha? A-ha?") are still very funny now, and they had a love for puns and dumb humor. Often Moe was striking Curly in response to a groaner of a joke, making it a sort of punctuation instead of violence. *Not just theirs, of course.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Sep 30 2013 10:39 PM Re: The Three Stooges

I can appreciate what they're doing-- the slapstick, the verbal stuff, the emotional relationship, the rhythm of it all-- and can see why it works. Gut-level, though... I just don't laugh. It's not the age of it-- the Marxes' perversity tickles me, and the best Buster Keaton dazzles me with its mechanics. But the Stooges... maybe a little, when I was a kid, but even then... not so much.

Rockin' Doc Oct 01 2013 08:21 PM Re: The Three Stooges

Rather indifferent to the Stooges. I found them entertaining in small doses, but generally after 5-10 minutes i had seen enough of their slapstick and was ready to find something else to watch (or do).