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Three Stooges - Stooges at WorkRating:
Release Date: 13 January, 2004 Retail Price: $19.94 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.95! Cast: Complete Cast (5 total) |
Three Stooges - Stooges at Work Reviews
Stooges at Work
Wow, this sucks.
I spent my teen years in Tampa, Florida, avoiding all three networks in favor of WTOG, 44, an independent station which had extremely good taste in oldies. Back before cable, folks. Very little color and nobody gives a flying fig. Great stuff. Including, little brother Barry and me laughing our butts off at Three Stooges reruns. Well, um, we never saw any of this. It really sucks. Badly. Curly was getting his routine together, but it wasn't there yet. My weak Curly imitations are far far funnier than anything on this DVD. It's so old that the slapstick wasn't funny yet, and they knew it, so they were doing verbal humor.
Yep, you read right. The Stooges tried to be verbal. Ahem. This is so lame. Just to make it worse, I can't even show it to my students whilst I sleep on the windowsill, because the language is too difficult for an ESL class. Difficult language in The Three Stooges? Yep, difficult language in The Three Stooges. I'm so incredibly freaked right now that I can't even talk. Mr Bean does Hamlet and Michael hangs himself from a shower rod.
It's only 90 minutes of my life that I'll never get back, so I guess that counts for something. But damn, it sucks. No redeeming qualities whatsoever, and it is hell on a FAN of these guys to see that something like this exists. Gawd, I pass myself off as an intelligent guy, but choose to defend The Three Stooges from time to time, and this here DVD is indefensible. Sheeyit. What a bummer. Stick my head in a steam press as if I were wrinkled laundry and hear me go "Woo woo woo woo woo!" Haha, so funny! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
A rather nice selection
As on the 'Stooges and the Law' DVD, this disc too includes a "Play All" button, which is a welcome relief from their past discs, which required the viewer to manually select each short one by one. However, as on that disc, here too there are only five shorts included. Given the length of these films, it's ridiculous that there aren't twice as many. However, at least none of the shorts here are bad. The plots have already been described by other reviewers, so I'll just add my thoughts on each one.
'Booby Dupes' (1945) is a bit above average. The plot is somewhat similar to the 1932 Laurel and Hardy short 'Towed in a Hole,' which has never been one of my favorites of theirs. However, this short isn't a carbon copy of it, as there are numerous original gags and plot twists. Overall, this is probably the weakest one included here, as there are several spots where there are long awkward pauses and a slower pace. The scene on the beach also seems a bit out of place, like it should have been put in another short. It's solid and funny, just not one of their most memorable or classic.
'Crash Goes the Hash' (1944) is a classic, or at least a strong second-tier classic. There's a lot of awesome violence in this one, and you know that there's going to be a lot of hilarious antics when the boys are at a dinner party and are trying to prepare food! There are so many great scenes and gags in this one, like the "canapes," the scenes in the kitchen, and "Prince" Shaam of Ubeedarn and his accomplice (Bud Jamison) getting knocked out, accomplished via the oft-used one-sleeve-in-the-coat gag. However, there are some down points to this short--Curly uses his real voice at one point, when he's talking to Larry at the table with the bowl of ice and the drinks, which is kind of jarring, and Bud Jamison isn't looking, or even sounding, that good. Sadly, this was Bud's last short with the boys, and it's obvious by his appearance that he was already sick when it was made.
'Dutiful But Dumb' (1941) is often praised as a classic, though I personally only find it above average. Of course, there are some great scenes in it, like Curly's battle with the oyster soup (previously done by Billy Bevan in the 1926 short 'Wandering Willies'), but overall I just think it's not one of their all-time greatest. It kind of seems slow in places, and the ending doesn't make any sense or provide any resolution to the main plot. It almost seems like one of their very early shorts, being more freewheeling and absurd, with the humor and plot all over the map, as opposed to having a strong tight plot and a satisfying resolution.
'How High Is Up?' (1940) is a very good short, though it's not one of my personal top favorites. The opening scenes and the ending scene are incredibly great and funny, though the middle section does seem a bit slow. It's just one of those shorts that is great and funny enough, just not ultra-memorable or one of their top-notch classics. However, they made enough classics during this golden era of the late Thirties and early Forties that some lesser-memorable shorts here and there isn't really a big deal.
'Three Missing Links' (1938) is absolutely hysterical, even considering that most modern viewers would find it silly and unbelievable for someone who is so obviously a person in a gorilla suit to be passed off as an actual gorilla, a "gorilla" whom grown men are supposed to be deathly afraid of. This was also the short in which Jules White made his debut as a director for the Stooges. There are a few moments that are slower than others, but overall it's a fast-paced riot, with a lot of great scenes and gags.
Overall, not all of the shorts on this disc are classics or among their utmost greatest, but they're all solid, funny, and high-quality in their own separate ways. One only wishes that Columbia would see fit to release more shorts per disc, instead of asking the consumer to pay more for less, or better yet to just start over again and release the shorts in chronological order, the way most fans want, instead of doing all of these "themed" discs.
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