The Three Stooges (2012)

The year is 2012.  The Farrelly Brothers – who arguably peaked with There’s Something About Mary back in 1998 – are still making movies, and you know, that’s fine.  However, someone keeps paying them to make their movies, and they somehow attract decent and famous actors for their movies.  This is of growing concern to me, because their films are becoming increasingly difficult to sit through.  So for this movie, they decided to give us The Three Stooges except in modern days.  A trio of men whose heyday was probably about 60 years ago (and just reading through their Wiki entry has depressed the hell out of me), whose chief claim to fame was physically assaulting each other to an alarming extent, reinvented for a modern audience.  How could that be a bad idea at all?

I don’t want to unnecessarily crap all over this movie, but I hated it.  The bright spots are the fairly accurate impersonations of the Stooges by Chris Diamantopoulos (Moe), Sean Hayes (Larry), and Will Sasso (Curly), as well as Sofia Vergara’s completely over the top performance, and her wonderful wardrobe.  I will also give points for Moe physically assaulting the cast of “Jersey Shore”.  Well, not many points, because I didn’t give this movie even a full point.

It didn’t work.  The entire movie, as a whole, while yes, it might be a loving accurate tribute to The Three Stooges, does not work.  I can sit down and easily watch old Three Stooges shorts because they were funny and very of their time.  When you have those characters in a modern day setting with a story borrowed from the 1987 Three Stooges video game, NO, so very much NO.  Did not like, would not sit through again, for all the scenes of Kate Upton in a bikini in the world.  Truthfully, there is not a good Stooges movie to be made in the year 2012 or beyond.  No gritty reboot, and even a biopic would be a hard sell.

0.5 / 5

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

This is another movie I watched a couple weeks back, and reviewing it here for posterity’s sake now.

Long ago, probably close to a decade now, I watched Wet Hot American Summer and was shocked that it was viewed by anyone as funny.  I think I might have been broken back then, because looking at the amazing cast that populates that movie, I have no idea how I could have not seen the humour in it.  Maybe I just missed what it was about, maybe I didn’t “get it”, I don’t know.  Looking at the poster for AGOFO I was struck by how much it reminded me of Summer and I wondered if it was going to be the same type of movie for me.

Yes and no.  The cast is populated with actors that I find altogether enjoyable in many movies that they’ve worked on, namely Jason Sudeikis and Tyler Labine, but also introduced me to a few talents that I had only heard smatterings about by this point.  The most disconcerting thing for me during the entire run of the movie was how freakishly similar Nick Kroll looks to Joshua Malina in every scene.  It was haunting me by the end.

The story is not as much of an “in-joke” as Summer seemed to be, just pretty straightforward.  Eric (Sudeikis) uses his father’s (Don Johnson) house every month to hold some ridiculous theme party and when Eric’s dad decides that he needs to sell the house, Eric needs to come up with One Last Party idea.  Along with his best friend Mike (Labine), they come up with the idea of having a good old fashioned orgy that will just be a small, intimate (literally) gathering.  At first, not everyone’s on board with it, but clearly from the film’s title, you know that it happens.

It’s an alright coming-of-age, coming to grips with the person you are story, and how immature us adults can still be.  There’s some sexy romping and decent acting throughout, but it’s nothing I’d really recommend off the top of my head.  Enjoyable, but not a laugh riot or anything.

3 / 5