The Farrelly brothers bring back the Stooges in the form of Sean Hayes (almost unrecognizable) as Larry, Will Sasso as Curly, and Chris Diamatopoulos as Moe. Hayes played the extremely gay character Jack on Will & Grace, Sasso was a regular on Mad TV for a while, and though I’m not familiar with Diamantopoulos he’s apparently a pretty busy actor, especially on television. They have the voices and mannerisms pretty much down pat and the physical resemblance is at least in the ballpark.

Because the Stooges are best remembered for the short comedies they did for Columbia that later became popular children’s fare on television, this film pretends to be four Stooge shorts, though the story unfolds uninterrupted across all of them.

Larry, Moe, and Curly have to raise money fast in order to save the Catholic orphanage where they grew up and keep the kids and the nuns from being thrown out. Jane Lynch plays the mother superior and Larry David is Sister Mary Mengele. In the course of this the Stooges encounter a femme fatale, a dimwitted thug, and the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore, who by comparison make the Stooges look the height of sober sophistication. (Even Moe finds them insufferable and at one point eye-pokes Snooki.)

The movie is clearly aimed at kids but has some laughs and is watchable for adults who retain some nostalgic affection for the Stooges.

Incidentally, fans of the original Three Stooges might be interested in reviews of a couple of their earliest film appearances in Soup to Nuts (1930) and Meet the Baron (1933). They aren’t great movies, but they have their moments.

by