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Film: The Three Stooges

Country: USA

Year of Release: 2012

Director: Bobby and Peter Farrelly

Screenwriters: Mike Cerrone, Bonny Farrelly, Peter Farrelly

Starring: Sean Hayes, Will Sasso and Chris Diamantopoulos

♥

Some movies can punch you in the gut. Although it’s not a frequent experience, when it happens, it is often achieved by an intelligent blend of powerful acting, carefully controlled direction, well-edited cinematography and strong writing. This was not the case, though, with The Three Stooges, which I watched at Gateway on a cold and rainy Wednesday night. Instead the movie left me emotionally shell-shocked, as I wandered around the shopping monolith after dark, and wondered for the future of humanity. The mere existence of such inconsequential, offensively stupid pap – which in essence offers sheer idiocy as a path to celebrity and success –left me in a unsettled existential plane, the empty husk of the shopping centre a weighty metaphor for a global mainstream that is increasingly vacuous, made all the more so by the fact that every year hundreds of strong, intelligent and substantial films are produced but never make it on to circuit.

The Thee Stooges, the latest film from the Farrelly brothers, is a reprise of a franchise that, despite its long history, has never really made much of an international impact, possibly because the global bar for stupidity has never reached American heights, and also because the characters are so profoundly thin, never transcending their odd-looking hair-styles. Larry, Curly and Moe, the Stooges of the title, are three supposedly charming idiots who have spent all their life at a Catholic orphanage. Spreading chaos wherever they go, they make the lives of the well-meaning nuns a misery and, due to their inherent unadoptability, grow into adult man-children who are too mentally undeveloped to leave the orphanage.

But when the orphanage is faced with imminent closure – due to the cost of the damage caused by the three Stooges – they are forced to head out into the world to raise the precise sum of $830 000 and save the orphanage. And so the stage is set for a clash between the trio’s idiotically ignorant bliss and the more fine-tuned chaos of the modern world. Except that the premise goes mostly unused and the boys just keep falling over and hitting themselves and others in the face with their fists, hammers, crowbars and even, on one occasion, a chain-saw. And despite the relentless series of moans and groans that exist in place of dialogue, no-one ever gets properly hurt – in the Stooges’ world being run over by a truck or having someone land on you from the top of a church tower is only slightly more painful than having your nose-hairs pulled out.

I should mention that The Three Stooges is supposed to be a children’s movie – I think. And I kind of suspect this because the Farrelly brothers, appear at the end of the film, and point out to the kids in the audience that they shouldn’t try any of the stunts at home and proceed to show that the hammers and mallets and other assorted weapons in the film are actually made of rubber. Whether they’re taking the piss or not, I really couldn’t discern. And I suspect this is because the Farrelly brothers themselves weren’t really sure either, hedging their bets by conducting their don’t-do-this-at-home safety feature in high camp mode.

The other reason I suspect this is a children’s film – and by children, I mean pre-school-going age – is that the film is so relentlessly repetitive. The central joke of the Stooges hitting each other in the face, with each punch producing a resounding metallic clang, didn’t make me laugh the first time, and certainly didn’t make me laugh the hundredth time.

But The Three Stooges is beyond infantile. The film’s most sophisticated gag involves the tiresome trio attacking each other with urinating babies. On a conceptual level, it’s quite out there, I suppose, and if you had to stick it in an art gallery it would probably cause a stir. But we are in the land of meaninglessness here, and all of reality is at the beck and call of a slapstick that is sadly devoid of actual humour.

I think I laughed about five times during The Three Stooges’ 92 minutes. Which at the exorbitant rate charged for a ticket, would make that R11 per laugh. Thank God I was in a rush and didn’t have time to buy Coke and popcorn.