Nutty But Nice

Nutty But Nice (1940)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent Three Stooges short has the boys working as waiters when a couple doctors ask them to visit a sick girl. It turns out that the girl is the daughter of a kidnapped banker and the only way she'll recover is by having her dad return so the Stooges set out to find him. This short is a bit different than many others in the series as it seems sentimentality was what they were mainly going for and laughs were just second. I doubt anyone is going to confuse this for classic material but at the same time I thought there were a few funny moments and the film is certainly much better than its reputation would have you believe. I think the weakest parts of the film are the few minutes inside the hospital where the child is in bed and the Stooges are trying to make her laugh. Not only do they not make her laugh but the viewers won't be overly thrilled either. The film finally picks up once the boys start their search and of course they get mixed up with some gangsters who are the ones holding the father hostage. There's plenty of nice violence in this short but this is what you'd expect. One of the highlights has one of the bad guys sticking his head through an opening in the door only to have the Stooges trap him with a chair and start to abuse him. The sequence towards the end deals with the lights going out and all types of confusion following but I found the entire thing to be rather dull in terms of laughs.

Larry, Curly, and Moe are waiters slash dinner theater performers. They are invited by a doctor to cheer up his patient, a little girl whose bank cashier father had disappeared with $300k bonds. The Stooges dress up as little girls but it's not enough. The girl is still sad. They set off to find her father. With only a limited random description, they randomly search the streets for the man. It turns out that the father had been kidnapped by the bank robbers. This is pure Stooges at their bumbling best. I love that they are randomly searching for a man with no plan. They are completely clueless and it's glorious. There is no meanness. It's pure joy.

In the Three Stooges 47th short Columbia picture, June 1940's "Nutty But Nice," they have an elongated sequence in their search for a missing father who has been kidnapped transporting $300,000 worth of bonds for his bank. In order to cheer up his depressed daughter, the Stooges, as singing waiters, volunteer to search for her father, Mr. Williams. In a series of mistaken identities because they're only given a verbal description of the father, the Three Stooges accost several men on the street, including lighting matches they stick inside the souls of one pedestrian's shoes so they could determine, as the kidnapped banker's profile reads, how tall the man's height is "in his stocking feet."

Today's viewers may recognize the kidnapped banker, actor Ned Glass. Even though he was a neighbor of Moe Howard's, Glass didn't benefit from knowing the comic personally when he got the part of the father of Betty Williams, the little girl who is sobbing to have him free. Not only was Glass, with his distinctive bald head and New York City accent, in several high profile movies such as 1961's "West Side Story" and 1963's "Charade," his claim to fame was his familiar face in nearly every TV series sit-coms up until his last appearance in 1982's 'Cagney & Lacey.'

Tons of gags but not a majority that work. That's not to say there aren't laughs, just not quite as many as their should have been - too many sight gags we've seen numerous times before in the prior stooges films of the 1930s. That can be acceptable if the gags were great to start with, but these are of the so-so variety, and they get a little stale after seeing them many times.

The boys do a good deed by searching for a missing father with the intent on cheering up a little girl who is sick in bed at a hospital, and miserable. The only thing on her mind is her daddy.....so the boys try to accommodate. It's a little different and could have been a heart-warming, feel-good story and still funny at the same time, but the jokes fell flat.

All is not lost, though, as Curly's fight in the basement with a bunch of bad guys is entertaining, as are a few other short scenes earlier on.

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!

One of the most unique Three Stooges shorts is Nutt But Nice. In this short are Vernon Dent, Lynton Brent, Cy Schindell, John Tyrrell, and Bert Young. The acting by these actors are good especially by Dent and Schindell. There are many funny scenes here that I think most Three Stooges fans will love! In My opinion this one of the most different Three Stooges shorts. I strongly recommend this one!