Three Little Twirps

Three Little Twirps (1943)

*** (out of 4)

The Three Stooges are working as poster hangers when the circus owner refuses to pay them in money but instead tickets to the show. Once at the show all sorts of chaos happens when the Stooges try to sell discount tickets.

THREE LITTLE TWIRPS seems to get a lot of negative reviews among fans of the Stooges but that's why comedy is quite subjective. For my money this isn't one of the best shorts that the trio did but it contains one of their funniest bits. There's a sequence where Larry and Curly get into a horse costume that is so awful looking that you can't help but laugh. The gag gets even better as they're taken to the butcher who wants to shoot the horse and feed it to the lions. This entire sequence had me laughing out loud and this alone makes the short worth watching.

Harry Edwards had no idea how to handle the Stooges. Instead of presenting them as lovable, bumbling fools, he presented them as unsympathetic pests. He did the same in his previous film with Howard, Fine and Howard, "Matri-Phony". After this disaster, Moe Howard asked that the Stooges never again work with director Edwards. (They never did.) The Stooges were not the only Columbia comedians to reject Edwards. Comedienne Vera Vague found Edwards so inept that she refused to work with him under any circumstance. Edwards was assigned to work with his long time friend, legendary comedian Harry Langdon. The later Langdon shorts are difficult to sit through. Once Langdon was dead and gone from Columbia, Edwards was fired and replaced with sound man Ed Bernds, who directed many of the best Columbia shorts from the late 1940s.

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

Three Little Twirps is one of My all time favorite Curly shorts and I think it one of the best ever made! Stanley Blystone, Bud Jamison, Heinie Conklin, Al Thompson, and Duke York are all in this short. The beginning is so funny and all of the circus Stooges scenes are hilarious and the actual circus scenes are neat! I strongly recommend Three Little Twirps!

Moe, Curly and Larry are working for a jerk who runs a circus. They've been hired to put up posters for the show and the skinflint pays them by giving them each a ticket! Moe insists they scalp the tickets...and Curly stumbles on a LOT of tickets and begins selling them for half price. The circus owner learns that this is happening and he and his goons give chase. They hide various places such as in the bearded lady's tent and later Curly and Larry pretend to be a horse....an embarrassingly bad and unfunny bit. After the three are caught, they are offered a choice...jail or be the 'volunteers' to have a wild man throw spears at them. It all degenerates into a mostly unfunny chase and then the whole thing ends on an unfunny note.

I noticed how Harry Edwards directed this one....and he was NOT a Stooge director. So maybe this is part of the problem with the film....but the gags and props also aren't very good....and blaming him alone doesn't make sense. Regardless, you could do far better with most other Stooge shorts.

Larry, Curly, and Moe are putting up posters for the circus. Instead of cash, they are surprised to be paid with tickets. The boys try to scalp the tickets but Curly goes too far. They try to hide in the circus. They are forced to be human targets for the Zulu spear throw. This is a standard Stooges short for the most part. The last bit does have some racial ugliness which actually fits the circus acts of the day. It was played for comedy back then but today comes with a bit of awkwardness.