The Three Stooges: Critic Reviews

It's an enchantingly well-done tribute that revives, and even refreshes, our affection for the Stooges, yet at its core it lacks the completely and totally unhinged shock of the new.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly's thoroughly enjoyable paean to Moe, Larry and Curly and the art of the eye poke.

It shows that what made the Stooges work all those years ago, though hardly in vogue, still works today.

Pop culture references intermingle with the loopy trio's iconic foolishness, and the result is a movie with some big laughs, plenty of heart and terrible coifs.

Even by Stooges standards, it's overly juvenile and totally dumb.

It pleases me to report that the movie is far from a disaster - on a dozen or so occasions, it's even funny.

The leads acquit themselves in the physical comedy, resurrecting shtick honed on a thousand-and-one vaudeville stages, and recreated in as many playgrounds.

It's a concept that shouldn't work at all. But - who'da thunk it? - it's better than a hammer to the head.

...while a good part of the picture reached my submerged Stooges person and made him laugh, too much of it just didn't connect at all.

The movie is so infantile that it achieves a special kind of purity and gentleness.

I didn't laugh much.

I spent a lot of "The Three Stooges" staring, not laughing. For me this was a stare-out-loud affair.

There is hardly a smidgeon of comic invention here.

The movie is content to simply mimic the old Stooges, bringing nothing new to the table.

Leave it to a sibling comedy duo to recognize the potential for brotherly love amid the Three Stooges' slap-happy antics, adding a welcome heartwarming dynamic to the gang's signature eye-poking, head-knocking routine.

You would think that after a quarter-century in development at four different studios, somebody would have figured out how to make a funny movie about the Three Stooges.

The Three Stooges is moronic, stupid, idiotic entertainment for knuckleheads.

Any reasonable objections to the Farrellys' Three Stooges will not be on the grounds that it desecrates a revered comedy franchise, but on the grounds that it's not very funny.

The Three Stooges weighs in at about 15 howlers over 90 minutes. Not bad, about the same ratio of hilarity to hokey as the Stooges' old shorts.

[A] funny, good-hearted resuscitation of Hollywood's beloved lowbrow lunkheads.

A little nyuk-nyuk-nyuk goes a long way in "The Three Stooges," Peter and Bobby Farrelly's feature-length homage to the classic slapstick comedy trio.

The purpose of the entire enterprise seems to demonstrate the superiority of slapstick sadism from 75 years ago to the wan attempts at PG-rated roughhouse today.

For the Farrellys, The Three Stooges is a labor of love. For non-believers, it's merely a labor.

There is an appealing nyuk, nyuk nostalgic spirit to"The Three Stooges."

Short, silly and charmingly harmless, it's likely only the Stooges aficionados will find a whole lot to love.