Remember how crazy it sounded when there was talk of Sean Penn, Jim Carrey, and Benicio Del Toro playing the Three Stooges in a new Stooges relaunch? Remember how – even if you had no personal interest or affinity for the Stooges themselves – you were kinda curious about the project just because of those actors’ involvement? “Wow, two serious Oscar winners playing Larry and Moe in a big studio comedy,” you might have thought to yourself. “That’s crazy! A Three Stooges relaunch in 2012 seems more like something we’d see as a lame TV movie starring people like Will & Grace‘s Sean Hayes, MAD TV‘s Will Sasso, and Chris Diamantopoulos, the guy who played Robin Williams in Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Mork & Mindy’.” Well, if you actually thought that, you’re psychic. Cause that’s what we got.
And now we have a teaser trailer too.
The Three Stooges was directed by the Farrelly Bros, who, to be honest, do seem fairly appropriate for the material. I must concede that nothing about this project has ever appealed to me, other than the oddity factor present when Del Toro and Penn were involved. I have always been a Marx Brothers man myself. I’m a fan of slapstick, but even so, I got my fix of it from Tom and Jerry and the Looney Tunes as a kid. Stooges were never my bag. Though I respect that they were major influences on many artists of the generations above me (Sam Raimi to name the most obvious). Regardless, I can’t imagine the trailer below is going to make many Stooges fans particularly excited. This looks only a hair above The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in ‘For Love or Mummy’. I won’t make any claims that I know what a Stooges relaunch should be, but there is just something about this vague origin-story set-up and pop culture flaunting approach that feels wrong, even to a non-fan such as myself. I also have mixed feelings in general about treating a performer’s life-long public persona as a character that can be played by other actors. I realize the Stooges cycled through several actor themselves, but that’s not quite the same thing. Curly replaced Shemp, and Curly Joe replaced Curly. We didn’t just keep getting new Curlys over the decades.
Though maybe I’m dead wrong and talking out of turn. Stooge fans, what do you think?