The Three Stooges (2012)

It's a little late for April Fool's Day, but here's a legit review of the Farrelly Bros' take on "The Three Stooges" (Legit'!)

Written at the time of the film's dropping like an anvil on the head ("Why, I oughta....")

Going Through a Series of Stooges
or
A Reboot Right in the Keister

Last week, a Catholic bishop made headlines by comparing President Obama to Hitler (one suspects for the mandate that birth control—a Catholic "no-no"—be provided as part of health care, instead of only God being allowed to service the reproductive equipment) and beating his breast over "the culture war against the Catholic Church."  

"Why, I oughta..."

Two things: Any recent problems the Papists have had lately, they've brought on themselves (and frankly, some of those priests should be practicing birth control);* and, it's funny that he's invoking Hitler now, when his Church took a virtual vow of silence on Der Fuerher during the Second World War, during what was a real flesh-and-blood religious war and not some fantasy "culture war."  That argument does not hold holy water, which one is starting to suspect is made up of crocodile tears.

But...wait.  After seeing The Three Stooges,** one might concede the bishop a point or two...right in the eye-balls. The plot concerns the new version of the Stooges ("Moe"=Chris Diamantopoulos, "Larry"=Sean Hayes, "Curly"=Will Sasso) trying to raise money for the orphanage they grew up in (shades of The Blues Brothers). The boys are left there as infants and grow up to be complete idiots (while the nuns age not a day***).

The nuns include Jane Lynch (unfortunately, dialed down from her potential), Jennifer Hudson, Kate Upton (Sports Illustrated's latest bikini cover-girl), and...Larry David (as Sister Mary-Mengele). It's a small shock to see David in the role, but apt, as he (she?) gets the lion's share of the abuse from the boys (and after years of cringing at David's antics on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" a little cathartic), but once the plot gets going, the hi- and lo-jinks get spread out for all sorts of guest stars, including Stephen Collins, Sofia Vergara, and the cast of "Jersey Shore" (also particularly satisfying, when "Moe" briefly joins and abuses the cast). The film is divided into three episodes that eventually come together at the end. It works, and surprisingly well, as the Farrelly brothers are fans enough not to mess with what worked in the past (and, of course, made them fans).

"Nng-yaaangh-yangghn!"

This director team is hit or miss for me. They can "work" (as in the anarchic There's Something About Mary) or not (Dumb and Dumber, where I didn't laugh once and kept checking my watch). But, this one clicks along at a good pace, generated by the facile performances of Hayes, Fasso and Diamantopoulos. The brothers are very aware that this one will be mostly for kids—their other PG-rated film was Osmosis Jones—and there's even a post-script (by Faux-Farrelly's) warning youngsters "don't try this at home" and showing how eye-pokes are done and the rubber hammers props. So, this is a diluted version of what they could have done with it, and one can only imagine how much further they could take it.

"Nng-yaaagh-yangghn!"

But then, one wonders what would have happened if the original casting had gone through: Jim Carrey as "Curly," Sean Penn as "Larry," and Benicio Del Toro as "Moe." All fell through for one reason or another. "Creative differences," maybe. Gee. Ya think? With those three involved, things might have been a bit more socially-oriented—having The Stooges involved in the banking industry, or maybe involved with the initial Hurricane Katrina response. But, I'd like to think that a great comedic vehicle ripe with with possibilities would be the one place they might naturally fit in—Congress. "Soitanly!"

"Helloooooo"

         "Helloooooo" 

                        "Helloooooo"

The original Larry Fine, Moe Howard, and Curly Howard (Rest in Pieces)

* I'm a recovering Catholic, by the way, take that for what you will.

**  Should we be calling it "Three Stooges 2.0?"  Or after the "Shemp" and "Curly Joe" years, is "Three Stooges 4.0" more accurate.  At what Stooge are we?)

*** This is a quibble and thinking WAY too hard for a Stooges movie—any Stooges movie—and that is one thing the Farrelly brothers do really well here: keep the comedy simple and stupid, on the order of the comedy era in which the originals wreaked havoc.  There's always a tendency in remakes and re-boots to complicate matters, as if to legitimize it in some way.  Not here.  You can't take this stuff seriously in any way, shape or form.  But, the sheer visceral joy of the Stooges is amped up slightly, matching the already precise vaudevillian timing of the first Stooges.

Red Notice

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Three Eggs Make an Omelette
 or

A Gal Caught Between a Rock and a Nut-Case

 

So, the story is that Cleopatra received three ornate eggs given to her by Marcus Antonius on their wedding day (historical note: they never married), and over the centuries, two of those jewel-encrusted eggs had fallen into the hands of museums or private collectors, after being discovered by a farmer in 1907, and the third is still out there, it's whereabouts unknown.

 

That's the McGuffin of Red Notice—those three eggs—but as they're McGuffins, they could be anything. Precious jewels, gold bullion, carved birds, lottery tickets, Arks of the Covenant, Sacred Stones, The Holy Grail or Crystal Skulls. That's the curious thing about these types of movies—we as the audience don't care about what the stakes are as much as the people in the story care about them. If the story of the hunt is entertaining, we're along for the ride, whatever the thingamabob is. They can be Sacred Sow's Ears as long as they make a silk purse of a movie out of it. For the viewer, it's a lot like buying crypto-currency; Perception is all. (That's three simple words, Matt Damon)

 

The perception, of course, is that Red Notice would work. You have three stars, each capable of having a movie financed as long as they're in it (forget that the last couple of movies of each have been lackluster at the box office). They're all entertaining in their own right and have a favorable public perception, so putting them in one movie will make it three times as good. Right?

Right? Well, we'll get there. There's a lot of activity at Rome's Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, where one of those Cleopatra eggs is on display. Inspector Urvasi Das (Ritu Arya) is leading a team of Interpol agents and massive FBI criminal profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) on his suspicion that the egg is about to be stolen by the legendary art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). The Museo's security chief is dismissive because his security measures are unbreakable, there have been no attempts, he doesn't know anything about Hartley, and, look, the egg's right there in front of all these crowds here.

But, this is The Rock, after all. He rips his own shirts, jumps around skyscrapers and pilots boats over tsunami's! He sings, he dances, he even has snit-fits with Vin Diesel! Of course, there's reason to be concerned! To everyone's surprise, Hartley breaks through security and melts the displayed egg with a can of product placed Coke®—not even the Diet or Zero Sugar version! The egg has already been stolen! Displaying his crack comic timing, Booth (who is in the crowd because he's so subtly stealthy) immediately lights out while the Museo's security measures slooooooowly go into place, allowing Hartley' FBI agent to manfully wrestle them from closing entirely in his pursuit. Booth is amazingly spry and quick-thinking and makes fast-work of evading the guards and creating a lot of damage in the museum's conveniently safety-defying construction zone—there's a Wilhelm scream and many sound-alike ones for the sharp eared. The sharp-eyed will merely start rolling them.

But, when Das and Hartley track Booth down at his home in Bali, the egg is stolen by Booth's rival Sarah "The Bishop" Black (Gal Gadot) while it is being secured...because Gal Gadot looks so much like an Interpol strike force commando. Because of the botched recovery, Das has Hartley arrested—instead of investigating it for six weeks—and has him and Booth incarcerated...in a high security Russian penitentiary. That's right, a Russian penitentiary. Why? I don't know, I'm just reading the graphics! But, Booth and the man who arrested him get to share the same cell (!!) and plan to make their escape, after Black confronts them and offers to have them released if Booth tells her where the third egg is...as he apparently knows its location.

By now, you're asking why Booth needed to steal the museum egg if he already knew where the third one was. By now, I had stopped asking questions like that as I knew that I would have to call 9-1-1 to have them put me in a padded cell for observation if I was going to make it all the way through this 90 minute movie...and I was only 30 minutes into it. Let's just summarize that the movie continues in this throbbing vein with lots of set-pieces, changes of locale, and a snarky quip from Reynolds' Booth every 9.5 seconds—the best one is "Man, we've got bad fathers. It's a miracle we're not strippers!"—and double, triple and quadruple crosses (if you're even bothering to keep track), underpinning the many plot-holes that the movie digs for itself.

Did I like the movie? I didn't have enough Xanax to be absolutely sure, but I will say this: with a film this that has the consistency—and nutritional value—of cotton candy, one desperately clings to the stars as if it were the last hanging thread of a rapidly fraying rope. And each, in their own way, disappoints. One can hardly blame them, the script gives them nothing—absolutely nothing—to work with, and one gets the sense that they're riffing with whatever star-stuff they can ooze from their pores. Reynolds has the "Bob Hope" role; he takes nothing seriously and just does the free-ranging Deadpool "schtick" devoid of context and appropriateness. Very early on, you get the sense that anything this character achieves is done by accident, as he is such a jabbering screwball, he must be thinking up zingers rather than keeping his mind on what he's doing. Frequently, his character is bound or tied up, but they never gag him because, as a result, 90% of the movie would just go away.

Gal Gadot is another matter. I'm a big fan of hers, my opinion only increasing after watching out-takes of the Wonder Woman movies, where she cracks up incessantly over the sheer absurdity of what she's being asked to wear and do. Yet, when the cameras roll, there is a professional dedication to making the uncredible credible and through sheer force of will makes you believe. The stakes to "make it work" aren't as high here, and so Gadot falls back on personality. Perhaps inspired by Reynolds' irreverence for the material, she, at times, just "has fun with it" (as the useless direction goes), prancing, singing, trying anything she can to make what she's got to do seem lively, but it's inconsistent throughout the movie, which, although it works when scenes are dragging, makes you take her less seriously when she drops it in scenes where she has less to do. A consistent attitude to one or both of the male leads would have helped...but that's the script's fault.

Finally, there's "The Rock". I think Dwayne Johnson is a national treasure. He is quite capable of doing anything, and he does comedy and drama equally well, and as a personality has a propensity for not taking himself seriously which puts him head and shoulders above the Schwarzeneggers and Stallones when it comes to the action genre. They're capable of dull heat, but Johnson sparkles with star quality, risking the perception that his physicality or power won't be taken seriously. The truth is he can overpower any presence sharing the screen with him, and has done so frequently. Here, though, maybe in deference to his co-stars, maybe to set himself apart and find his own lane, maybe to ground the thing a bit, he puts in less of an effort and coasts. It's disappointing, and one wonders what might have happened if he pushed it just a bit more, stepping on a Reynolds line, being more of a rogue, instead of playing straight man. Johnson should not set up, when he's capable of hitting things out of the park.

And they each got $20 million bucks doing this. The market will bear what it bears, and I don't begrudge them taking a big front-end pay-off than depending on the gamble of any back-end profits in a time of empty theaters and a streaming pandemic. But, the results are so meager and discouraging that you wonder if anybody could have made this movie work at all. All three of them are capable of "carrying" a movie by themselves, but sharing the responsibilities is a case of diminished returns, a train-wreck, and a disappointment. 

 

It feels like a "third wheel" problem, and maybe one of the three characters should have been dropped, but it's a mystery as to who it should be—it could be any of them, frankly. It's just the shell of a movie and empty inside. Like an egg. Maybe that's the real McGuffin of the movie, if anyone cared.

Wilhelm Alert at 09:50