As Coisas estão Pretas

Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curley Howard are new old doctors in Los Arms Hospital. It's an early Stooges short in Columbia. The bits feel more vaudevillian. This actually got nominated for an Oscar. I love the old midget female patient. The door bit is funny. Tic-Tac-Toe is easy. It's so old that it's new. It's simple fun jokes and old broad gags.

This is one particular Stooge short that actually uses satire in conjunction with slapstick, a rarity. As mentioned, the title and concept for this short was "borrowed" from a feature film from the same year with Clark Gable called "Men In White". It's basically about the trials and tribulations of interns and their sacred cause for "duty and humanity". I saw this recently and almost treated it like the Stooge version because it does take itself a little too seriously. In any case, "Men In Black" is so well written, directed and not to mention original, it didn't borrow a thing from Chaplin or any of the others, that the Motion Picture Academy nominated it for an award as the best short comedy of 1934. Some stinky short called "La Cucaracha" outdid it though and stole the award. Some producer's brother in law must have been on the Academy's voting board. "Men In Black" pokes fun at the whole concept of the medical profession much in the same way that the Marx Bros. always did at this time. May not be a fair comparison but I can see the Marx Bros. in this short. In fact in their feature "A Day At The Races", there is a scene where there's "medical things" going on and they cause anarchy as usual. My guess that this particular short was judged along those lines and hence why it was nominated in the first place. Try this in fact: watch this short first and then watch "Duck Soup" or "Day at the Races" with the Marxes and then see if there isn't the same great quality of comedy.

While mostly routine for the Stooges, "Men in Black" still has some good moments. This time, the boys have somehow managed to graduate from medical school, and they are working in a hospital, where their performances as doctors are about what you would expect them to be. The humor in this one mostly mostly relies on a set of recurring gags, with the best one being the Stooges' frantic entrances and exits to and from the office of the hospital's superintendent. It doesn't have the sustained laughs of their better comedies, but there are some funny parts that make it worth a look.

A criticism that I've heard of the Three Stooges is that - unlike Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers, all of whom treated the underdog with dignity - they make it look as if the underdog deserves to be the underdog. As long as we understand that, it's easy to laugh at the gags that abound in "Men in Black", as the trio become doctors and cause a series of mishaps in the hospital (namely with the superintendent's door). This short received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject - Comedy (now Best Live Action Short Film) but lost to "La Cucaracha".

Basically, it makes no pretense about what it is. A good time to be had.

Directed by the younger brother of great director Leo McCarey this is a pretty good short from the Three Stooges, nominated for an Academy Award. Here the stooges are doctors named doctor Howard, doctor Fine and doctor Howard. They are not the brightest doctors but they get the benefit of the doubt as long as they handle for duty and humanity.

I liked this short. It is not one of their best but some moments are hilarious though. One joke that is repeated more than once works every time. The part where they must operate the hospital's boss is terrific. To say more would spoil some of the jokes, so you must see it for yourself. Just another fine short from the Three Stooges.