Search - The Three Stooges: Curly Classics on DVD

An interesting selection

Anyechka | Rensselaer, NY United States | 03/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Since the plots of these shorts have already been described by a number of other reviewers, I'll just give my opinions on them and on the DVD overall.

'Woman Haters' is one of those shorts that most fans either love or hate. I didn't care for it that much the first time I saw it, but I do agree that it does get a little better with repeated viewings. It probably would have been a better film if the entire thing hadn't been spoken in rhyme; that device gets old and tired after about a minute. Although I'm confused as to why it was seen fit to be included here. It's not really a Curly classic because Larry is the one who gets the most lines and the leading role!

'Punch Drunks' is a big step up and should have been the first short they released at Columbia. Though it's one of their very early ones, it has a great plot and lots of great comedy. Until about sometime in 1935, they didn't really have their formula down pat yet, but this is one of the early ones that shines and deserves to be called a classic.

I actually think 'Men in Black' is somewhat overrated. It's a really odd short, and there are moments of humor, but nothing I found really that hilarious. I fail to see why this would get an Oscar nomination and is considered by many people to be one of their best. The problem might be that the comedy style is all over the map, like they weren't yet sure what type of humor they wanted to do--verbal, physical, or just plain absurd humor. If this weren't one of their very first shorts, it probably wouldn't have such an important reputation. Although that doesn't mean I think it's one of their worst shorts (far from it).

'Three Little Pigskins,' their fourth short, is another of their very early classics, though taken in comparison to all of their other work, I wouldn't necessarily consider it one of their all-time classics. There's a good solid plot and lots of good humor, and I liked seeing the great character actor Walter Long and how the opening scene reflected the time period of the Great Depression. I also noticed that the middle section of this short borrows from the earlier 1928 Laurel and Hardy short 'We Faw Down.' Once again we see a lovely young lady's hat being blown off of her head and underneath a car, and when our hapless heroes go to retrieve it, they get soaked by a passing street sweeper and are invited back to the home of the woman and her friends. While they're waiting around for their clothes to dry and are wearing clothes given to them by the women, and flirting with them, the ladies' mobster boyfriends show up. The ending is kind of in media res, but everything that came before was so good it doesn't matter that much.

'Micro-Phonies' and 'A-Plumbing We Will Go' are bona fide classics and really deserve their place on this collection. They both have strong plots and lots of great slapstick. They were made at a point in their career when they had long developed their screen personalities and had been at their creative peak for some time.

Overall, this is a pretty good collection, but as aforementioned, I am curious as to why their first four shorts were included as Curly classics. At this point, he hadn't really perfected his screen persona yet (such as in how you can hear him talking in a voice closer to his real off-camera voice instead of the high-pitched baby-like voice he later developed), and you can also tell the other two hadn't gotten their own screen characters down pat either. It seems like it would have made more sense to have included shorts from a wider time range instead of having their first four shorts (all from 1934) and then having the other two be from 1940 and 1945. It's a little curious as to why some of these shorts were included on here, but generally speaking, it is a collection I would recommend getting."

Classic Curly is as good as it gets with the Three Stooges

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 05/26/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

""The Three Stooges: Curly Classics" includes not only the first four shorts the Stooges made with Columbia in 1934 and then skips ahead to the classic "A Plumbing We Will Go" from 1940 and "Micro-Phonies" from 1945 and Consequently, from both a historical and a comedy standpoint, this is one of the better videos of the Stooges out there:

"A Plumbing We Will Go" (#46) is a classic short the Stooges did at Columbia. The cops are chasing Curly, who was fishing illegally (in a pet store tank), and eventually the boys end up stealing a plumber's truck. This gets to the classic gags of the boys trying to plug up leaks in an expensive home. This is the one where Curly is trying to stop a leak in the bathroom by connecting pipe lengths together, not stopping until he has completely encased himself in pipes. Once again the Three Stooges show that their best bits are actually the ones with a minimum amount of slapping and conking heads, but as they wreck havoc trying to make things right.

"Men in Black" (#3) is the only short for which they were ever nominated for an Oscar. The boys are doctors at the Los Arms Hospital and every time they are paged over the intercom ("Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard") they find a different mode of transportation for getting to where they need to be (e.g., horses, go-carts). One of the things that makes this one a standout is that in addition to Moe slapping Larry and Curly around, there are a lot of pretty good one-liners having to do with the (mal)practice of medicine.

"Micro-phonies" (#87) is another classic Three Stooges adventure with the boys as handymen trying to fix a heating pipe at a radio station. The next thing we know Curly, in drag and lip-synching a song, is hired to sing the song at the part of a rich lady. So Senorita Cucaracha, along with Senors Mucho and Gusto (Larry and Moe) arrive to destroy the party. The Stooges take on a tenor and have to be rescued by the lovely Christine McIntyre, who would often appear in these shorts during the late Forties.

"Punch Drunks" (#2) has Moe as a fight manager who needs a fighter. He settles on Curly, who fights as KO Stradivarius, because every time Larry starts playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" on the violin, Curly becomes a fighting machine. Of course, Larry's violin gets destroyed during the fight with Killer Kilduff, and he has to find another way of getting the song played before Curly gets killed. The solution is actually pretty funny and so far this video has three classics in a row.

"Three Little Pigskins" (#4) is the Three Stooges answer to the climax of "Horse Feathers" where the Marx Brothers destroy a football game. Here the gangster Joe Slack needs some ringers to help his team beat a professional team, especially since Joe has a $50,000 bet on the game. So a young and blond Lucille Ball suggests Joe check out the local college where he gets the mistaken idea the Stooges are football players. On the gridiron the boys try their best, but you know how good that is going to end up being and their are some pretty funny football gags before Joe chases them away with his gun.

"Woman Haters" (#1) has the distinction of being their first short with Columbia, but fails to attain classic status. Actress Marjorie White gets top credit and for some reason that passes understanding, all of the dialogue is done in rhyming couplets. The Stooges make a grand entrance with lots of slapping and Curly does say "nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" for the first time, but the poetic dialogue wears thin really quick. However, there is no doubt that all those years in vaudeville have well prepared the Stooges for the big time in comedy shorts."