Soup to Nuts

Well, folks, I dunno' . . . maybe I'm just a little nutty myself, but I really like this film. For the record, I also like the movie "Meet the Baron" and a couple of the Fox Laurel & Hardy movies; on the other hand I think "Dancing Lady" is very BORING, and I think "Swing Parade" is BEYOND boring and a terrible waste of talent, especially in the finale. So that's where I stand...

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The story moves along briskly with one colorful character popping up after another, with the jokes doggedly marching along. If you don't like one gag, you'll laugh at the next—well, smile anyway... Happily enough, there are indeed a number of Rube Goldberg's "inventions" on display throughout the film.

The Three Stooges appear suddenly in the first instant of the first live-action shot of the movie, and the whole scene is very funny. They sing and do the sand-bag routine (later reprised in the 1950s on the Ed Wynn Show. Here it is more logically framed and much better timed with a stronger ending). I find Ted Healey very charming and funny, too. His girlfriend Queenie (Frances McCoy) is perfect: darling and hilarious, and remains one of the great mysteries of film--absolutely nobody seems to know whatever happened to her!

There is actually quite a lot of Stooges, and they have as merry madcap a fire department you could please. If you think of the movie being in 3 parts, they are in two-thirds of the film.

The quality of the Fox 2005 reprinting is GREAT, both image and sound. Imagine: a 1930 movie that no one cared about, saved at the last minute and looking so good. OK, it's just not a "great" film, so 7 stars out of 10; but the restoration is 9.99 stars. (One curiosity is that the end music is quite long, but there is no picture!)

We should be so lucky to see the Laurel & Hardy movies again in such pristine condition. Hallmark should be shot.

Everybody commenting here seems to forget about the fine character actor Charles Winninger, who unfortunately is one of the best things about this mediocre picture. Yeah, we Stooges fans only watched this to see our favorite slapstick guys in their very first exposure to film, and most of us already knew that Healy's semi-popularity as a comedian was a mystery. But there are indeed other things going on here, most notably the aforementioned Winninger, who's the funniest person in this film, most assuredly. Watch out for that gigantic boot!

What we appear to have here are some vaudeville comedians trying to bring their acts to the screen assisted by a story from comic strip artist Rube Goldberg. It doesn't seem likely that any of them knew much about making movies no matter how good they may have been at making people laugh in their normal venues. The result is a mostly haphazard collection of lame gags with a few totally inane scenes thrown in for "plot" development. It isn't a total loss, however, because this fundamental weakness turns out also to be the film's greatest strength. Not knowing what they were doing, they manage to create a movie with a truly unusual and unique approach to film comedy. No matter how bad it may be, there are a few moments of hilarity delivered in a style you'll not see anywhere else.

What really makes this worthwhile for most viewers, however, is it being the film debut of the 3 Stooges. Their skit near the end of the movie is basically a filmed vaudeville routine and is quite a bit different from the familiar act they eventually developed for their later shorts, but it's probably the closest we'll ever come to seeing what they originally looked like when performing on stage (and our only chance to see bizarre "fourth stooge" Fred Sanborn). No 3 Stooges fan should ever consider passing up the opportunity to see this.

Let me also say that many of the other reviews here seem very unfair to Ted Healy, the Stooges original leader. From what I've read, the Stooges always thought very highly of his talents, but eventually got tired of his drunken binges and not being given the credit (or money) they deserved. In fact, it was after an early split with Healy that Shemp refused to return to work for him, thus requiring younger brother Curly to be brought in as a replacement (although much maligned by Stooge fans, Shemp does go on to be the only one of them with a successful film career independent of being a stooge). Healy, a big vaudeville star, seemed on his way to becoming a big film star before being killed in a bar fight during one of his drunken binges. Having never had the chance to see him in vaudeville, it hardly seems fair to judge him based on a few movies he made while still learning how to make the transition.

I first caught this movie at four a.m. one night and found it to be insane, pure insanity. The first half hour or so is pretty slow and not very funny, but full of shouting and sight gags. But things get going when the Stooges (with Shemp, of course) go to a restaurant and annoy the waiter. Then their peformance at a firemen's ball is a lot of fun and starts the movie with some good laughs that continue as the Stooges try to fight a blazing fire. A lot of the Stooge elements of later shorts can be found here (the fixed coin tosses, the slapping, the big fat lady) but the movie doesn't focus enough on the Stooges' personalities to create the hard laughs that the shorts have, and the lackluster performances by the supporting cast cause this movie to lag at times. But the slap fight between Shemp and Moe is hilarious.

This curio represents the nuttiness of famed cartoonist of a century ago Rube Goldberg, who co-wrote the movie and has some of his zany inventions featured. Its early talkie era technique is static and dated, but there are so many gags included that some are bound to amuse.

Ted Healy is featured with his Three Stooges, numbering Shemp, Moe (his stage name is Harry at this point) and Larry, no Curly in the group. A fourth stooge is played silent (a la Harpo in the Marx clan) by Fred Sanborn, who has memorably bushy eyebrows, is very short and throw in effeminate moves in his pantomime routine Sanborn even has a featured shtick playing the xylophone while he dances.

. The other three stooges do physical shtick and also provide a harmonized (barbershop quartet style) singing that is well-done and I don't recall being exploited in their later films.

It's clearly not up to the standard of the Marx Brothers classics, or even those popular RKO vehicles for the team of Wheeler & Woolsey, but it's still fun to watch and intentionally makes very little sense.