Cavaleiros Bagunceiros

The Three Stooges offer themselves as musketeers at the service of the Queen of France, whose Captain of the Guards is, unsurprisingly, planning to usurp the throne. After a bright start featuring Walter Brennan as The Stooges' dying father, this soon degenerates into a lengthy but unfunny wrestling bout among the boys; luckily, it picks up again when the Queen is abducted eventually, and much of the action in the second half involves the stars contriving to get rid of her captors.

Even though little is actually done with the medieval setting, it is nevertheless interesting as a spoof of many a costume piece/swashbuckler of its day – especially "The Three Musketeers"; for the record, director Lamont would helm many an Abbott & Costello vehicle during the coming decade.

This is one of those stooges films that starts off with a bang(the scenes with Walter Brennan playing the boys father, the wrestling match in the castle)then starts to run out of steam after about 8 minutes and doesn't pack as many ROFL moments to close out the short that it started with.

5/10

Although the setting for this Three Stooges short is unusual and the costumes and sets much better than usual, it's otherwise a very typical sort of film for these folks. It begins with Moe, Curly and Larry being told by their sickly father that they are actually of noble birth and they are to go to the Queen and offer their services to her as guards--much like the Musketeers. However, when these three idiots are wrestling about as entertainment for the Queen, they don't notice that she's been kidnapped. They are arrested and only avoid execution when they are sent to find her. What follows are lots of folks being bonked on the head and people being stabbed in the butts with swords. If this is your kind of thing, you'll love this short. Otherwise, it has a lot of energy but lacks good belly laughs.

This review is of the sixth consecutive Three Stooges short made by Columbia Pictures. As their previous short-Horses' Collars-was their first western spoof, this one is the first set in Medieval times. It seems their dying father (Walter Brennan in his second Stooges appearance) has revealed to his sons (Moe, Larry, and Curley as his name was spelled at the time) that they're of royal blood and assigns them to protect their queen. I'll stop there and just say that while there are plenty of highly amusing scenes here, very few of them are non-stop hilarious and the end is a bit abrupt. In fact, maybe they could have added 15 minutes to bring more of a logical story to term. Still, Restless Knights is enjoyable enough and for that, I recommend it. P.S. This isn't the first time he boys got a triple slap on film since their previous leader, Ted Healy, has done that several times before to them.

Restless Knights (1935)

** (out of 4)

After hearing about a plot to assassinate the Queen, the Three Stooges becomes knights but trouble follows. I think this is one of the weakest shorts that feature the original group of Stooges. I think the writing is pretty lazy, which leads to extended scenes that just aren't very funny. The wrestling matches are deadly dull and pretty much kills everything that follows. Even the slapstick humor is pretty dull.

Now available in Columbia's 2-disc set, which features over 20 classic shorts.