Three Stooges: Non-sexual 'Boobs in Arms'

Come to think of it, that's not entirely true, as there is a subplot involving making a husband jealous... a slight nod to Laurel and Hardy's The Fixer Uppers, but never mind. A classic Stooge is still a classic Stooge, and this is one of the great ones, IMHO. The elements are just right, the setpiece that stretches out the length of the film is well hidden, and... I dunno, it ultimately just works, like Micro-Phonies! I'm not a big fan of Micro-Phonies, however, but we'll get to that one soon enough, perhaps by the Presidential election. Someone else do the sums on that one for me.
Well, I'm under increasing pressure these days now that I don't have any more homework, so I can't devote the usual time I do to my Stooge reviews, but I'll do what I can here. It's kind of a shame, really, because the Three Act structure is very sharply defined here. Something about war brings out the best in the Stooges, and they finally draw a direct correlation between war and greeting cards, a connection that's rarely talked about in the lame-stream media. The boys start out peddling greeting cards, and run afoul of a particularly disgruntled customer. They end up head-butting him into a laundry ... you know, when they've got two panels in the sidewalk that's used for laundry? The Stooges have relied on those many a time before. SPOILER ALERT: So, they end up running into the guy's wife, they end up counseling her on how to win her husband back, who she feels no longer loves her. Curly ends up pitching some woo with the lady; she ends up fainting in response. It's a delicate balancing act of making the husband just jealous enough so that he doesn't end up killing Curly. They don't pull it off. So that's two run-ins with the same guy. The third run in: the boys end up enlisting in the Army, and the guy's their Sergeant! Gotta love that. More high-jinks.
Soon the boys end up at war with a country that's not quite into the Fascism game as good as Germany or Japan or Italy. Why, even the guy who turns and looks turns up as an enemy soldier! There's also a guy who screams rather loudly after sitting on his own spiky helmet... and rightfully so. The boys get one last chance to stick it to that Sergeant fellow, but they were high on laughing gas so they weren't totally aware of it. Sadly, actor Richard Fiske actually was killed in action in World War II, and died in LeCroix, France; everything indeed did happen to him. Still, a fine Stooge short, and it belongs squarely on that short list of the ones I tend to watch over and over again when it comes time to select a DVD for a bunch of us to watch on the telly... so old fashioned, no?

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan