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Three Stooges- Nutty But NiceRating:
Release Date: 14 November, 2000 Retail Price: $19.94 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.95! Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
Three Stooges- Nutty But Nice Reviews
Five out of six isn't bad
This disc contains 6 shorts, five of which are of excellent quality even if not all of them might be considered top bona-fide classics. The other one had the makings of a great short, but sadly is marred by the black cloud looming over it. Since a number of other reviewers have already described the plots, I'll skip the redundancy and go straight to my opinions on each.
'Hoi Polloi' (1935) is an absolute bona-fide classic, probably one which just about every fan has in his or her personal Top 10 favorites list. There's not a dull or wasted moment in here, and none of the numerous remakes of this short could ever come close to topping the classic original. This was their tenth short made at Columbia, and right around the time when they'd finally really perfected their screen characters, their comedy style, and their screen relationship. From this point on out they only got better and better.
'False Alarms' (1936) is another of my personal favorites. There are also too many great scenes in here to list; the entire thing flows so perfectly, with nary a dull or wasted moment in sight. To give just one example, I love the scene where, for one brief moment, you're made to believe that Moe actually stuffed Larry down the drain of the sink! I also love the scene near the end where Curly and Minnie (June Gittelson, his girlfriend Maisie's fat friend) are slapping one another back and forth, though if it were any other actor I'd be horrified and would view it as a shocking and unacceptable act of violence against a woman.
'A-Ducking They Did Go' (1939) is yet another perfect and hilarious classic, from their prime period. Perhaps it's not one of their top-notch classics, but I would consider it a strong second-tier classic. Among my favorite scenes are when Moe eye-pokes the inflatable duck and when Curly points a rifle at his own head so he can shoot a duck on top of it. However, the ending is recycled footage of the ending of 'A Pain in the Pullman' (1937), and feels really bizarre and out of place, particularly since it doesn't really have anything to do with everything else that just happened.
'Nutty But Nice' (1940), the title track, has a plot similar to that of 'Cash and Carry' (1937). A lot of fans don't really like either because they don't feel it's very funny or believable for the boys to be shown as chivalrous do-gooders, but it's nice to see a softer side of them, particularly knowing how much they did for disadvantaged children in real life. And seeing them as noble heroes is certainly a better fit than seeing them as cowboys in all of those Westerns they did, a role that never really fit their screen characters. Even if one doesn't care for how they're cast as do-gooders, at least one can appreciate the great fight they have with the bad guys. (On a side note, the line about the horse they encounter on the street possibly being the reincarnation of Betty's father was a bit disconcerting, since it calls to mind the premise of those unspeakably awful Besser-era shorts 'Hoofs and Goofs' and 'Horsing Around'; the less said about those, the better!)
'Higher Than a Kite' (1943) is a war-themed short, with some classic slapstick in the car repair shop and then some great satirising of the Nazis. It's much easier to watch WWII-era movies making fun of the Germans as opposed to the Japanese because the Germans were only made fun of for their horrible government, not on account of their race. The first half of the short is particularly great because we don't often see Moe getting so much physical abuse and punishment as opposed to being the one doling it out in spades. Although there is one small detail that begs for an answer, even though comedies aren't always supposed to make sense: How did that Bulldog from the US Marine Corps get behind the German lines?
'Half-Wits' Holiday' (made in 1946, though released in early 1947) is a remake of the far superior 'Hoi Polloi,' and actually could have been a pretty good short in its own right. There are some pretty good scenes, like the pie fight at the end and the dinner scene. It also was the wonderful Emil Sitka's debut as a supporting actor for the Stooges. However, it's incredibly hard to watch, heartbreaking even, knowing that Curly had his near-fatal stroke during filming (although at least he doesn't look or act as sick in this as he did in, say, 'Beer Barrel Polecats' or 'Three Loan Wolves'). It's hard watching him take physical abuse in this one regardless, knowing how sick he was. And when he walks offscreen shortly before the pie fight begins, it's a really sad feeling, knowing we'll never see him again except as in a brief cameo in 'Hold That Lion!' a few shorts later, that moments later he slumped out of the director's chair, unable to move, and crying because he was unable to speak. It's even more disconcerting to watch the pie fight, knowing that Harry Cohn, the slavedriver who ran Columbia, actually made Moe and Larry continue filming instead of going with him to the hospital. It must have taken their all to not show their real feelings during the final scene. The ending itself is also really sudden, like the director just decided to call it a day and end the film then and there, even though the ending was kind of in media res. I'm surprised the studio didn't just use stock footage of an earlier pie fight, given how enamoured they were of stock footage. Watching this short feels like being kicked in the stomach, and leaves a very heavy depressing feeling.
Still, apart from how difficult it is for most people to sit through the final short, the previous five are awesome, making this disc very recommendable.
Wait a second. These Three Stooges comedies have plots!
The three Columbia shorts collected on "Nutty But Nice" are pretty funny, but what is surprising is that on one Three Stooges videotape you would find that all three stories have a plot that pretty much exists from start to finish. There are a whole lot of Three Stooges comedies where the end has nothing to do with the finish, but that is not the case here:
"The Sitter-Downers" is a 1937 comedy that find the Stooges in love, with three sisters of course, but their father rejects their marriage proposals so the boys stage a strike. To our surprise, it works and the boys decide who gets which girl by drawing names out of a hat (Curly gets "Stetson"). The payoff for this comedy is when the trio of happy couples is given a free house to live in: the catch is that it comes in a kit and the Stooges need to assemble it. Which they do and it looks pretty good--until the final shot.
"Nutty but Nice" comes from 1940 and starts off with the Stooges operating a restaurant but the main part of this is their efforts to cheer up a little girl who is sad because her father disappeared from the bank with $300,000 worth of bonds. But even with the Stooges dressed up as little girls doing their lollipop routine, they cannot get her to crack a smile. So they decide to track down the missing dad. This is actually a happy ending to this one and, in an even bigger surprise, we actually get back to the restaurant where the whole thing started.
"Slippery Silks" is a 1936 comedy where the Stooges start off as antique restorers. That might be the strangest job they have had, but of course they end up destroying a rare Chinese cabinet. So the next thing the boys are doing is making dresses at Madame de France's gown shop. The antique restoration (or destruction) from the first reel is combined with the dress making from the second reel as the Stooges design clothes that look like furniture (complete with the drawers).
I am still amazed at the sense of narrative completeness demonstrated all three of these comedies. Two of the three had the story and screenplay done by Ewart Adamson, but "Nutty but Nice" was written by Clyde Bruckman and Felix Adler. Sorry, but that is the best explanation I can come up for this strange occurrence.
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