Sweet and Hot

Sure, it's not the best story, and it was a showcase for Muriel Landers, but I've always enjoyed the dialogue in the doctor's office.

"Gentlemen, take a chair." "Here, here, here! Please don't take them home!" "Indian Giver."

The worst Three Stooges film of all time! There's so many things wrong with this film, it's almost impossible to list them all.

First off, the most important thing: Where the heck is Moe??? Sure, he's in the short, but not as his usual "Stooge" self at all. Instead, he plays a German psyciatrist, with glasses on, and his hair all combed back! Larry and Joe Besser work as a team, but Larry's hair isn't poofed up like it usually is and he doesn't do anything funny or Stooge-like at all here, and Besser's his usual annoying self. You can't break the Stooges up like this and have them appear as seperate characters! They've done this several times before and it never worked, but it really takes the cake here.

Secondly, there's no Three Stooges slapstick in this. A good majority of the film is taken up by long, boring musicals (musicals - never one of the Stooges' stronger themes, other than the classic MICRO-PHONIES), and the scene at the psyciatrists' office isn't funny at all.

And lastly, Muriel Landers, the lady playing Tiny is just annoying (like Besser - no surprise they played siblings in this), and her acting talents are so bad, it's very embarrasing. It's obvious this short was a vehicle for her so-called "singing" talents, but why waste the Stooges just for this lady's "talents"?

Like I said before, it's sad seeing comic geniuses like the Three Stooges relegated to a disaster like this. This is very embarrasing for a Three Stooges fan like me to watch, cause it ain't a pretty thing to watch. It just doesn't get any worse than this!

I liked this short because the Stooges played separate roles and Muriel "Tiny" Landers was comical (like some over-sized women I know). Moe and Larry did not wear their vintage Stooge haircuts, which gave a different flavor to this short. I was surprised to see Joe do a tap dance (I did not know he had such a talent). Larry did play the violin (for real) like in other shorts. The music was swinging.

As a die-hard Stooges fan, Spike TV (and AMC) have not shown this short. There are a lot of shorts that have not been shown by these two networks. I was told that Columbia owns the "missing" shorts and have not released them to television. Joe was alright as a Stooge. They were getting too old to hit anyway. I did see Joe get some hits in his shorts (unless that was a stunt man).

The shorts the Stooges made toward the end of their careers were universally terrible. The budgets were slashed to almost the point of invisibility, and as a previous poster has said, the boys were old, tired and past their prime. This actually looks more like a "trial balloon," as it were, for the "talents" of one Muriel Landers, who plays Tiny. She is neither talented nor tiny. She is a short, heavyset woman who is given a number where she sings and dances and proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that she can do neither. Something else she can't do is act--there's one scene where she sticks her finger in her mouth and starts talking baby talk, which is embarrassing, uncomfortable and, frankly, creepy. Moe has his hair slicked back and plays (badly, to be honest) a German/Austrian/whatever psychiatrist. There are virtually no production values--the whole film looks like it was shot in a dark, ill-lit corner of the studio somewhere. There is not one even remotely funny line in this film--not ONE. Moe and Larry look like they're trying to give it their best, but they were either too old, too tired, too discouraged, or a combination of all three, and their best in this case wasn't even remotely good enough. This is a complete embarrassment, and if you love the Stooges as much as I and a lot of others do, spare yourself the sad spectacle of watching a comedy team that was once at the top reduced to participating in this sad excuse for a comedy in order to pay the rent. Watch some of their masterpieces from the '30s and '40s with Curley, or even some of the later ones with Shemp, but whatever you do, avoid this one like the plague. Remember the Stooges as they were in their prime, and not suffering the indignity of having to make this pathetic, embarrassing and, finally, sad mess.

"Sweet and Hot" is neither sweet nor hot. What it is, actually, is sad. The Stooges were near the end of the line (Columbia would shut down the shorts department and unceremoniously dump them later that year), and it shows. They are old, and they look tired. Columbia cut the budgets for its shorts department to almost nothing, which is obvious by watching this thing. Besides the Stooges, the only other "actor" (for lack of a better word) in this film is Muriel Landers, a woman who is so monumentally untalented it is actually embarrassing to watch her. You wonder if she was related to some Columbia executive, as that could be the only possible explanation for her appearance. She can't sing or dance (although for some unfathomable reason she's given a musical number), and she certainly can't act. There's no real plot to speak of; nothing in this film is anywhere near funny. The whole thing runs about 15 minutes and looks like it was shot in 16 minutes. It is not easy to watch this film, and not just because of its cheapness and ineptitude. It's sad to see two comics (Joe Besser was never considered a real Stooge by true Stooge fans) at the end of their careers in a vehicle that is nowhere near worthy of their talents, and this piece of crap definitely isn't.