The Taming of the Stooges

Well, if it's using old footage, then the title's certainly justified.  But seeing as how this is a refactoring of Fiddlers Three, and how much I raved about that particular Stooge short, there's just no turning back now.  In this remake, they de-emphasize the fact that Vernon Dent is supposed to be Old King Cole, and just focus on the marital dilemmas of the Stooges.  The king decrees that they can get married, but in the spring.  You know, when the flowers bloom, and all that poetic crap that the chicks like.  Maybe it also serves as a Daniel Goleman-esque lesson in emotional intelligence: delaying gratification and what not.  For even though flowers only bloom in the spring, people can get it on year round.
Where was I?  Oh right.  The king wants his daughter married first before the Stooges.  It's Cuckoo on a Choo Choo all over again for this extended family.  Not all is happy about the impending marriage of King Cole's daughter, however.  More specifically, the sorcerer played by pre-Jerry Stiller actor Philip van Zandt.  There's intrigue, there's mayhem in the magician's box, but more importantly... there's a very satisfying ending for those of us Stooge fans who have trouble with the Stooges, the ultimate bachelors, getting married  to girls old enough to be their daughters and raising families.  The ending here?  After the Stooges reign triumphant over the knuckle-headed bad guys, they run towards the loving arms of their brides-to-be... but a little too eagerly, as it turns out, for the three couples end up hitting each other in the heads, and they all pass out in a heap on the floor.  Finally!  The precise moment when modern men and women achieved equality of the sexes!  Now if America could just stop producing so many synthetic endocrine disrupting chemicals...

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan