Quiz: Test your Three Stooges knowledge
If cloning Dolly the Sheep is morally questionable, what about cloning the Three Stooges?
In classic Stooges fashion, Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) puts his pals Curly (Will Sasso, left) and Larry (Sean Hayes) in line. Moe, Larry and Curly have been reborn in the persons of Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes and Will Sasso, in the Farrelly Brothers' ("Dumb and Dumber") big screen update of "The Three Stooges," opening Friday.
"In a way it's a fit," says author Bernard F. Dick of Teaneck. "Because is there anybody today more lowbrow than the Farrelly brothers?"
Dick's book, "The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row: Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures," is a definitive study of the oft-derided "lowbrow" Hollywood studio whose most lowbrow product was its series of wildly popular "Three Stooges" shorts, produced from 1934 to 1957.
"I don't want to say that they acted like kids who failed kindergarten repeatedly, but you got that impression," Dick says.
To say that the Stooges – Moe Howard (of the violent temper and pre-Beatle bowl haircut), Larry Fine (the frizzy-haired patsy) and Curly Howard (the bald-headed lunatic, and Moe's real-life brother) – were not critical darlings is to be kind.
Each era has its lowest common denominator of comedy. Back in the day, intellectuals who praised Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers considered the Three Stooges the ultimate debasement of slapstick: crude, vulgar, violent. Which, of course, is exactly why kids loved them.
"It was just very lowbrow physical comedy, and that had an appeal to children," Dick says. "Because let's face it – children are naturally cruel people. But there was also an innocence about [the Stooges], too."
The new film by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, reportedly in "development hell" for more than 15 years due to repeated casting changes, sets the action in the present day. It introduces a back story about the Stooges' childhood in an orphanage and features walk-ons by reality show stars like "Jersey Shore's" Snooki and The Situation.
But mainly, these are the same old Stooges. Moe (Diamantopoulos) still clonks people over the head and pokes his fellow stooges in the eyes with two fingers. Larry (Hayes) still whines. Curly (Sasso) still barks like a dog and goes "Nyuk nyuk nyuk."
"I remember when they were first shown on television, there was a warning: Little boys, don't poke your sisters in the eyes," says Dick, professor emeritus at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
" 'The Three Stooges' had a kind of anarchic spirit, but isn't there violence in comedy to begin with?" he says.
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