O Foguete Errante

Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959)

** (out of 4)

Mildly amusing comedy has The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, Curley-Joe) accidentally setting off in a rocket and going to outer space. Once there they land on an unknown planet where they encounter a talking unicorn and an electronic creature. This was the Stooges big comeback after having been written off and pretty much overlooked. The trio had their shorts showing up on television where they gained new fans in the form of kids so this film was quickly released with the kiddies in mind. There's really no reason to compare this set of Stooges to the early Columbia shorts because it's obvious this film was made for a different group of people. Most of the comedy in terms of violence is watered down and a lot of the jokes are more slapstick than anything else. This film was certainly better than I thought it would be but it's still not quite what I'd consider a good film. There are a fair number of laughs scattered throughout with one of the best coming during a long sequence where the boys are trying to create fuel to make the rocket go. Larry ends up drinking the toxic fumes, mistaking it for coffee and the pay off here is quite nice. Moe and Larry were certainly getting up their in years and couldn't really do any of the more physical stuff but they're still pretty good here. Joe DeRita certainly isn't Curly but he manages to get a few smiles. A lot of comedians, including Abbott and Costello, were testing their jokes in space and I don't think too many of them ever really worked. The jokes here are certainly aimed at children and while a few of them work there's just not enough to carry the 76-minute running time.

This movie is the equivalent of a satisfying trip to your favorite fast food restaurant. Let's face it, if you're in the mood for a quarter pounder with cheese than the most delicious sirloin steak isn't going to satisfy you --- only that greaseburger will do. By the same token if you're looking for some low-brow Stooge fun then Ernst Lubitsch at his peak ain't gonna do it for you but this film will. Sure, it's not even the Stooges at their best, their glory days were almost twenty years in the past, but they still had some of the old zip and all the old shtick is trotted out like it was brand new and mixed with enough fifties sci-fi clichés to provide a satisfying junk meal. In fact a straight sci-fi movie like QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE could have used some of this movie's imagination and energy. I particularly liked the giant fire spewing tarantula, an effect pulled off quite well I might add, at least as well as Universal's "classic" TARANTULA. And I have to admit I find the title song kind of catchy. So sue me.

I saw this film and was pretty disappointed. No, it's not because of Curly-Joe. I saw other Stooge movies prior to this one with Curly-Joe and he seems alright, better than Besser at the least. Anyway, this film is kinda weak, and seems like something left over from the Besser-era, probably because this is only the first movie they made. But the boys have done a better sci-fi movie, in THE THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT. Curly-Joe also looks like he's having trouble settling into his "Stooge" character, and he has to copy off of Curly's mannerisms quite a few times. This was somewhat fixed a little later on. Anyway, not a terrible movie, but not great either. The Stooges made better.

How well I remember the long lines at the box office for Have Rocket, Will Travel. Harry Cohn may have died a year before, but his successors at Columbia Pictures realized they had a gold mine on their hands when those old Three Stooges shorts were gaining a new generation of fans of which your's truly was one of them at the age of 11. The lines were comparable to those for a new Harry Potter film, I kid you not.

The Three Stooges had their half hour comedy show with Officer Joe Bolton on WPIX Channel 11 in New York and other similar venues throughout the country. So with only two Stooges still on this mortal coil (Joe Besser was never really a Stooge), the search was on to find a third one to fit in with Moe Howard and Larry Fine.

Character actor Curly Joe DeRita was hired to pinch hit for the late Curly Howard. Movie audiences if they had noticed would have also seen him in 1959 as a treacherous hangman in the Gregory Peck western, The Bravados, but here he simply steps in as a kinder, gentler, and somewhat less zany version of Curly.

Looking back, Have Rocket, Will Travel borrows quite liberally from the Abbott&Costello film, Abbott&Costello Go To Mars. The same premise happens, three nincompoops instead of two accidentally get launched into space and head for Venus where they establish interplanetary relations.

The film does not have the Stooge zaniness, there could only be on Curly. But Joe DeRita is not the only problem. Moe and Larry had aged and the physical comedy they did in their younger days, just isn't present any more.

For the kids back then it was satisfying enough, but Have Rocket, Will Travel just doesn't measure up to the Three Stooges in their prime.

After having a batch of their old short films with Curly Howard released to TV in the late 1950s, the Three Stooges were back in demand and Columbia Pictures finally gave Moe Howard and Larry Fine the opportunity they always wanted for all the years they were making shorts--the chance to star in feature length films.

Joining Moe & Larry as the new 3rd stooge was show-business veteran Joe Derita, nicknamed Curly-Joe--presumably because of his somewhat physical resemblance to Curly Howard.

And the thing you might notice with this new stooge lineup is that these are not the stooges of old back when they were in their prime with Curly and Shemp. In fact, these stooges are old & maybe with old age came a softer approach. Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of personal taste, I suppose--although I would point out the problem with the majority of the Derita era was the softer approach & how the stooges seemed to have gotten pegged during this point in their careers as being just "Children's entertainers."

Definitely, the cutesy talking unicorn angle of this movie seemed expressly aimed at pleasing the younger kids in the crowd--although if you're like me, you know that when the stooges were in their prime, their act with Curly and Shemp was hardly cute and whimsical. Indeed, during those days, a little petty larceny by the stooges was considered a good thing.

Who knows what the stooges could have done if they had been given the chance to make features during the 1930s, 40s, or 50s, but "Have Rocket" was not exactly the greatest vehicle they made, but it does have its moments.

5 stars