Short Reviews - May 2012

These reviews are making me thirsty!



School Ties - PONICSAN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Color of Justice - Too bad Stanley Kramer wasn't there to fix the many problems with this movie... By the way, I saw the whole thing.  Sometimes in this section I haven't seen the movie, I confess.  Not in this case, however.

Thrive - A student Right-Winger recommended it, so I know it must be garbage.

Colors - Sorry, Bob Solo, but we only saw the first couple minutes of it.

Embryo - Oh, Barbara Carrera... will you facebook friend me anyway?

Revenge of the Jocks - The insurrection begins...

The Long Toothache of the Soul

Our next Stooge short is called I Can Hardly Wait.  You'll see why it's called that soon enough.  Incidentally, this is not to be confused with 1998's Can't Hardly Wait featuring Tom Cruise wannabe Peter Facinelli and the scrumptious Jennifer Love Hewitt.

ACT ONE

The start of the film is clever.  I hate to have to spoil it, even after 70 odd years.  It starts with the boys entering a dark house and going up to a safe.  It seems like a heist picture, when in fact it's merely another commentary on Depression-Era rationing.  Kind of like what the free market does now!  In addition to such off-limit lunchables as ham and eggs, someone's got their pair of shoes in there.  The camera stays on the refrigerator / safe long enough to wait for the laugh.  Fade to the dinner table, where the one slice of ham hovers over a plate, yet to be cooked.  In about a minute span, Curly says "I can hardly wait!" three times.  Moe calms him down by placing Curly's fist on his chin, and his knee to his elbow, and ...  Larry then makes the mistake of telling Moe to hurry up, but instead of an open-faced sandwich, Larry gets an open-handed slap.  Curly slices a loaf of bread in half.  They should feel lucky to have bread, really!  Moe starts flipping the slice of ham and... yup.  What is it with him and pancakes?  And now HAM!  Moe looks in Larry's hair for the slice of ham.  Cut to Curly with a slice of ham on his head.  Curly looks like he's gearing up for a pie fight, but he then realizes he's got the slice of ham on his head.  See, when Curly isn't in control of the ham slice, he demands it be divided up equally.  When Curly IS in control of the ham... time to use the WHOLE LOAF OF BREAD to make a ham sandwich.  He's about to take a bite, when... he realizes there's no mustard!  What was he thinking?  Time to stop and get the mustard.  Curly n'yuk-n'yuks quietly to himself as he puts a butterknife in the jar of mustard.  Moe walks over to intercept Curly's mustard.  Curly looks over and isn't surprised to just see Larry by the stove.  Moe lays his arm on the loaf of bread.  His anger turns to anger-horror as Curly liberally applies mustard to his arm.  "What a slice of ham!" says Curly.  Oh, I forgot to mention that there's an anti-Japanese slur to set the scene.  Well, it was the war and all.  Curly ends up with mustard on his face, and tells Moe he'll clean the ham when he's ready.  Hardcore Stooge fans know what Moe's response is to that.  Still stewing from his run-in with Curly, he takes it out on Larry who's lovingly cooking a pot of steaming hot water.  Moe shoves Larry's face down into the pot, but not too far.  Just far enough to justify the sound of scalding.  Larry cries "You burnt my little bugle!"  Damn!  He looks like he really got hurt.  Columbia probably couldn't afford dry ice.  We go back to Curly who's wringing the last bit of nutritional value out of the slice of ham in his rigorous efforts to "clean" the ham.  He even gets out the washboard.  LOL.  Curly gets out a new loaf of bread and starts cutting it, while singing "She was Bred in Old Kentucky, but she's only a Crumb up here."  Notice how he's cutting the bread, because it's going to get a callback.

ACT TWO

This is probably a good time for an act break.  We cross-fade from Curly slicing bread to dinnertime.  Normally this would be the part of the film where time is stretched out, but this isn't normal circumstances!  This is dinner!  Depression-Era dinner, no less.  Now comes the part the Right Wing will never understand.  Moe explains to Curly how a whole egg shell and whole ham bone is better than half an egg and half a piece of ham.  Curly being Curly, he accepts this logic.  There's a nice shot of Moe at about 5:43.  What's unusual about it is that he's just eating and not hitting somebody with something.  Curly swallows some eggshell, and with things like this it always means overtime for the sound department.  Back to Curly's irregular loaf of bread at about 6:00.
Anyway, the nightmare begins promptly at 6:24.  We've seen glimpses of Curly's bald mouth in Dutiful but Dumb, and we saw Moe's filling in the last picture, if I recall correctly.  As with show business, most jobs have ... most American jobs have scattershot dental plans, and being a Depression-Era Stooge was no different.  The Stooges poured their hearts and souls into their scripts, even though Columbia never pitched in for the Stooges' own sets.  The boys have bitten into sharp objects before, but it's been mere passing incidents, never the plot of a whole short.  And so, with all this in mind, after Curly bites into the ham bone, the toothache that consumes the rest of the film begins in earnest.
Moe ends up with a ham bone monocle in the initial confusion, but the toothache will not be denied.  But even in pain there can be humor.  Moe steps on Curly's foot and Curly says "Oh, my foot!"  Larry kicks Curly in the ass and Curly says "Oh, my ...... tooth!"  The Stooges go to bed.
Cross-fade to the Stooges' bunk bed.  Curly's on top, of course.  Even the best of Stooge scholars still can't explain the Stooge Bunk Bed hierarchy.  Must have something to do with the concept of potential energy.  The bed shudders as Curly paces in his top bunk, quietly complaining about his tooth.  Larry's temper flares in this episode.  "BE QUIET AND GO TO SLEEP!" he yells at Curly.  Moe eventually tells Curly to come down and they'll fix his tooth.  Curly steps on Larry's face, then Moe's face. (7:32)  Moe hits Curly in the stomach, but the tooth still prevails.
In lieu of Professor Moe, Moe Howard DDS gets right to work on Curly's tooth.  Moe points to a potential candidate, and Curly's "bunny ears" start to twitch.  Moe tells Larry to get the hot water bottle... Larry doesn't seem too happy with this request.  Now, all you screenwriters out there trying to craft the World's Next Great Sixth Sense clone, pay close attention to this part.  We could all learn a little something about plotting here.  Larry brings the hot water bottle, informing Moe that he couldn't find the official hot water bottle stopper, but offers a cork as an alternative.  Before this happens, Moe looks like he accidentally actually dings his head on the upper bunk at 8:04.  With Larry's work done, he tries climbing back into his middle bunk, but fails.  Moe helps him out, and Larry hits his head on part of the bed in the process.  I'm hoping that one was scripted.  And so, with the unsecured hot water bottle in place, and Moe and Curly in position in the lower bunk, Curly rests his tooth down upon it, drenching Moe with scalding hot water.  I'm starting to notice that every once in a while Moe really loses it, even more so than usual.  8:38 is one of those times.  Anyone else on the internet keeping track of this stuff?  It should be part of the XML revolution, the internet's second wave.  The internet went through its Lambada oh-puhleeze-get-a-room phase and has now matured into the slightly more mature Macarena phase.  Curly climbs back up to the top bunk, re-crushing the faces of Moe and Larry while doing so.  Boy!  Larry's so irritable in this one!  Check out 0:08.  God bless Sean Hayes and all, I think Tobey Maguire would've made a better Larry.
Curly reaches his top bunk and eventually falls asleep.  A dream bubble appears over Curly's head.  Now we're talking!  What does Curly dream about?  Well, this time, he dreams about his toothache.  Funny!  I've had dreams where I'm lying in bed trying to go to sleep.  But enough about me.  Dream Moe says "Come on down and we'll fix that tooth for you right now."  Hmm!  Dream Moe seems to have a hidden agenda.  Anyway, Curly once again climbs down from the bed in a more spectacular three point landing.  The "Ohhh!!!" sound heard in countless Stooge shorts previous is heard at about 0:51 here.  Dream Moe tells Dream Larry to get the fishing line.  What does it say about the Stooges when the Dream Stooges act more "normally" than the Wake-Up Stooges?  Uncharted territory, my friends.  Curly asks Moe "Is it gonna hurt?"  Moe says "Of course not.  I won't feel a thing."  This is what Wham-Bam-Slam meant to do but botched it... just to be different.  The tooth fishing begins.  Curly starts wriggling around like a salmon out of the water.  Moe slaps Larry for good measure.  Curly starts doing his 360 thing.  Larry gets hit on the head with the fishing pole, leading him to rather emphatically say "This is NOT going to work!" at 1:43.  Second plan: tie the tooth string to the doorknob.  I like how Moe points out the simplicity of the plan to Larry.  Since we've still got to get to Act Three, the plan of course doesn't work.  Cross-fade to the Third plan.  I never realized that suicide and pulling a tooth were so similar!  Moe starts to count to three.  Larry, now caught up in the excitement, screams out "Two and a half!"  Curly lands on the floor and gets a double helping of ceiling plaster in the process.  Guess what Curly confuses it for?

ACT THREE

The plan of last resort is imminent, but Larry gets another idea.  "Why don't we blast?"  I was wrong.  Jason Alexander should've been Larry.  Listen to the way Larry says "Fourth of July" at 4:16.  Larry goes and gets the firecracker while Moe soothes Curly's nervous ego.  The lighter doesn't work, so Larry lights a match to light the lighter.  Lol.  Somehow I don't think that was in the script.  Well, you gotta hand it to the Stooges.  As riddled with violence as it is, there's some things even the Stooges won't tolerate.  Curly, for example, opens his eyes, notices that he's got a lit firecracker in his mouth, and throws it away.  Curly tries to warn Moe that the firecracker landed near his backside, but Moe tells Curly to shut up.  Twice!  Moe's ass explodes, and he writhes around in pain.  Fade to black.  Fade to the dentist's office.  Curly's forced in by Moe.  Moe's got Curly's arm behind Curly's back.  Curly says "I'm not afraid.  I'm not afraid!... what a liar I am!"  Ergo... ah, skip it.  The film drops three loud hints that this dentist is a bad one.  It's Curly's turn to go in, so he helpfully puts his arm behind his back, and Moe escorts him inside.  Meanwhile, Larry gets to sink his teeth into some serious flirting.  "How would you like to come back to my place and see my coffee?" says Larry.  "Fresh!" says the secretary.  "Oh yeah!  Ground today!" offers Larry.  What a Stooge.  Back to Curly who starts gobbling like a turkey when the first dentist tool approaches.  Curly's tooth is touched by it and Curly has had enough.  He leaps out of the dentist's chair and says "This guy's a butcher.  I heard the other fella say so!"  I should've mentioned that earlier more explicitly, but Curly is indeed right.  I'm paraphrasing like crazy during this portion for some reason, but... oh, hell with it.  I hate to spoil the big comedy surprise, but here goes.  Time for the old switcheroo!  That's the appropriate comedy strategy when it comes to dentist-based comedy.  Take the first scene with Alan Arkin in 1979's The In-Laws, for example... okay, I'm back.  Moe sits in the dentist chair to show Curly how to relax... enter Bud Jamison with an ether-soaked rag. 
To cut to the chase, after Moe realizes what just happened, Moe starts laying in to Curly.  He opens with a gut-head combo, then just starts punching Curly right in the nose bridge!  Curly starts fighting back by making pinwheels of his arms.  Time to fade out of the dream, where we see Curly rather spectacularly destroy the triple bunk bed once and for all.  Head first, no less.  It'll never be done as well again, all due respect to G.I. Wanna Home.  Waking-life Moe punches Curly in the mouth, knocking out the bad tooth.  Curly feels fine once again, and they all fall back to sleep in their giant pile of bodies and mattresses, making a train sound.  Curly gets to be the whistle, of course.

EPILOGUE

Now let's never speak of this one again.

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


For further study: A fine interview with Larry Fine.  Lord help us if they ever shut down YouTube.

Auteur Watch - Loudon and Rufus Wainwright

Why not, I say?

Probably Men in Black 3...

At least, I'm betting Sony's hoping so!  Well, it should do better than Wild Wild West, anyhow.  My God!  103 minute running time?  That's the longest yet!  It's NEVER going to recoup cost!

When Icons go Slumming: Sherlock Holmes and the case of the Crappy CGI Monsters

Apparently, the bar is very, very low on who can make a Sherlock Holmes movie these days.  You've got your high bar, of course: you've got the Robert Downey Sherlock movies.  I've seen part of the first one, but with a 90 million plus budget I'm sure they're not screwing around.  Even the Martin Freeman / Benedict Cumberbatch ones are cinema-worthy efforts, and it's a shame they just went straight to TV.  Also not screwing around.  Rachel Goldenberg's Sherlock Holmes (2010) is screwing around.
Yes, Rachel Goldenberg, director of Obama: I'm a Dick and producer of How Your P*ssy Works, directed this fanciful Sherlock tale.  It's told in flashback by a now aged Dr. Watson, telling some young lass that there's one Sherlock Holmes tale that's never been told before.  It's the one that gave birth to the Scooby Doo adventures to come, but without the reveal at the end of the greedy land developer who says "And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and that freak-ass stoner dog of yours!"  Alas, the filmmakers aren't able to make the most of their lack of budget.
Take, for example, the excruciatingly long scene where Dr. Watson tries to climb down the side of a cliff.  This seems to go on for about five minutes.  They eventually pull him back up, and just in time for the rope to break!  Sherlock asks him "Did you see the ship?"  Apparently he did, but all we see is the view halfway down the cliff.  There's also a thrilling chase through old London's temperate zone rainforest, apparently located in modern day Wales.  We were wondering about that.  The film's HD videotape origins are revealed, as we blurrily work our way through thicket, and spin round and round amongst the trees.
There's a kraken and a tiny T-Rex that wreak havoc, killing several people, and arguably the finale has its moments, but it's ultimately a great movie to heckle.  I couldn't help but wonder aloud if the people in the movie were actors.  Dr. Watson's got a long résumé but apparently very little training.  He kept reminding me of Andy Richter for some reason.  Something about the face, I think.  I hate to be too vicious, but let me just say that Elizabeth Arends makes a fine cyborg.  So it's not the best Sherlock Holmes movie around, but it's around nevertheless.  God bless you, Showtime!  Besides, even Creepshow 3 had some panache to it!

**1/2

-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Retroactive 2010

People, please!  Groundhog Day, The Matrix, Minority Report... what Source Code's source code is is 1997's Retroactive starring perpetual alpha-male James Belushi.  It's a lot like Groundhog Day, except it takes place in a car driving through the desert.
But I've said too much already.  Let me get the praise out of the way.  Jake Gyllenhaal does a fine job as the center of the story, and Michelle Monaghan was delightful.  I almost thought she was the terrorist at one point!  Such an alpha female!  Cinematographer Don Burgess, veteran of films like Forrest Gump, Contact, and 2002's Spider Man is clearly slumming here.  But I give him credit, as it looked more like film and less like blurry digital video tape or whatever the hell they shoot movies on these days.  However, much of the film looked like it was done on a green screen set... but that's part of the plot, innit?  As for Russell Peters, well... you'll hit the big time yet.  Try and get Aasif Mandvi's job on The Daily Show, then we'll talk.  And as one of the other critics points out, Geoffrey Wright kinda chews the scenery here.  He's going to get flak from his fellow black thespians for it, I hope.  Especially André Braugher.
Okay... SPOILER ALERT.  As for the convoluted plot.  All sci-fi plots have to be these days.  We start with a simple case of mistaken identity on a train, and we build from there.  The train explodes and there's a terrible crash.  As it turns out, the train is part of a simulation that exists only in a computer, and only in Jake Gyllenhaal's mind.  Nevertheless, he's able to move around in this virtual environment and interact with the people in it.  They're mostly bully archetypes so it's not terribly interesting.  On top of it all, he's supposed to find the terrorist who is responsible for the bombing. 
This seems more like a job for a Robocop or a policeman, but Gyllenhaal, in addition to being a crackerjack helicopter pilot, is a bit of a detective as well and relishes his role of working over the virtual suspects in this virtual world, looking for the right cell phone.  I'm afraid the overarching structure raises more questions than answers, at least for the likes of me. I guess that's the price of technological progress, though: we can recreate a virtual world with enough detail to simulate real life, and most of the things in it, but only a person in a coma-like state can have access to it.  With technology like this, no wonder we're losing the war on terror.

...was that a high enough high note to end on?  Probably not?  Okay, I'll keep going.  Not to mention the ending.  I thought Vera Farmiga pulled the plug on him!  Was the whole movie just a dream?  Is the Geoffrey Wright character just that forgiving, even though Vera's character basically destroyed his future success?  Does Jake Gyllenhaal eventually stop worrying and love his state of perpetual near-death employment?  Every PG-13 movie these days gets one "F--k" and I'll say this for Source Code: Jake delivers his "F--k you!" at exactly the right time.  Maybe not soon enough... oh, but there I go again.  I'm just too picky, I admit it.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon in... not the one about Alcatraz

That was the first one I thought of... Murder in the First.  Similar circumstances, I suppose.  Kevin Bacon's the defendant in both circumstances, anyway.  In Criminal Law, he seems more like Chip Diller all growed up and out of the frat house... okay, that's unfair.  He's actually too convincing as the rich boy with delusions of vigilantism, like he watched Death Wish once too often but missed the point.  Why the Right Wing doesn't hold this movie up as one of Hollywood's Good Works is beyond me.  Maybe because there's names like Mark Kasdan in the credits.
As for Gary Oldman, well... I noticed that some of the IMDb'ers were hatin' on his accent.  I won't go that far, because I studied Christian Bale's performance in American Psycho, and his accent definitely slipped during the big emotional climax on the phone.  During Oldman's first emotional climax at Karen Young's house, the accent didn't seem to slip!  Personally, I think the problem is that this is too ordinary a role for Oldman in the first place.  But he gives us a little of that ol' Sid and Nancy magic when he's playing racquetball by himself.  God bless 'im.
Actually, it's probably the wrong movie for director Martin Campbell as well, who would go on to do GoldenEye and the new Bond-esque Zorro movies with Antonio Banderas.  But I will commend him for that one sex scene!  We had to search through it, for God's sake!  Not bad for an R pic from 1988.  Karen Young was also in 9 1/2 Weeks.  I've never seen it myself, but I'll bet it wasn't that steamy.  Gotta get this on DVD or Blu-Ray... and edit out the part where Kevin Bacon's in the scene.  Ewww...
Anyway, on to the plot.  Maybe the subject matter itself is just inherently bland, but because it's a Kasdan product it does smack of backstory and deep characters.  Gary Oldman plays, wait for it... Ben Chase, former prosecutor turned defense attorney, but he's no mere ambulance chaser anymore.  See?  It's all related.  We open the film with the case that won't consume the rest of the film, but with the defendant that will.  Sorry, SPOILER ALERT.  Ben's life as a defense attorney takes a turn for the worse: he grows a conscience.  He realizes he's a mere pawn for guys like Kevin Bacon... what is his name, anyway?  We don't learn it during the trial.  His name's ultimately not that important.  All you need to know is that he's the bad guy, and that he's a Fourth.
As Roger Ebert says, there's a "meet cute."  Arguably, it's not so cute to begin with, and it's probably the only way I'll ever meet a girl, but I still felt a little used by it all.  It's complicated, anyway: Gary Oldman goes to meet Kevin Bacon at the park at 11pm at night, but runs into the charred body of a young woman instead.  Oldman takes off, finds the first house he can, and asks to use their telephone.  The house is occupied by one Ellen Faulkner (Karen Young), and the two eventually fall in love, even though she hates him at first because of what he is: a defense attorney.  One other casting gripe: I think I heard that the film takes place in Boston.  They must've mentioned it once or twice.  But Joe Don Baker?  Seriously?  Hell, Tess Harper, for that matter!  You want to complain about accents!
In summation, ... I know, I'm terrible.  Well, the film must have some kind of legs!  I typed in "Criminal Law" into the IMDb search window, and it came up!  And it was the only one at that.  I found it to be average, overall.  It had mostly bad moments and bad plot devices, but a couple good moments.  I kinda liked the big final courtroom showdown.  I guess the Right Wing doesn't champion this movie because, even though the woman representing Planned Parenthood gets killed, she was a Job Creator.  And that's with a capitol J.C., if you get my drift.  Besides, it was an inside job.  But the Right Wing should know as well as anybody that all rich people are crazy.  God bless 'em for not leaving their side.
As for the music, well... it may have been composed by Jerry Goldsmith, but he borrowed rather liberally from Peter Gabriel's The Rhythm of the Heat.  Maybe a little too liberally.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Cheech and Chong's The Three Stooges

Again with Schicklgruber.  Well, it was 1943 and the war was far from over... and America still far from entering the war, if I remember my history correctly.  I've just seen Higher than a Kite, but I have yet to figure out how the title relates to the film.  Maybe they just ran out of good titles, I don't know.

ACT ONE

Well!  For once the boys don't start the picture running from the law.  Gives them a chance to limber up first.  We see an airfield with some planes taking off.  The Stooges haven't become dizzy pilots themselves, but rather are tending to things in the hangar, for some reason.  Or so it would seem.  No hitting yet.  Turns out they're working at the "Airport Garage."  Things slowly start to get violent when Moe removes Curly's backpack.  Larry gets to lay out the scenario for us: "I'm sick of this!  We came overseas to join the R.A.F.; we're still civilians working in a garage."  We eventually get from Curly a Chico-esque pun on the word "navigator."  Spoiler alert: it gets a callback later.  Moe has a not-at-all clever retort to that, and Curly gets back to work.  Curly and Larry work on the vacuum cleaner.  It ends in disaster for Moe, who ends up laughing like Mitt Romney at every campaign stop.  Curly walks away at a brisk pace, but both are powerless to escape Moe's laugh beam.  Moe keeps laughing.  Curly and Larry start laughing.  Moe closes in and starts to bonk some heads... even though Curly and Larry hit each other in their respective shoulders.  Very yin and yang.  However, the larger plot intervenes in the form of a car backing right into them.  All fall down.  The Ted Healy type comes in with an important assignment.  Could this be the assignment that consumes the rest of the film?  Could be!  There's a squeak in Colonel Henderson's car, and if they don't find it, Curly's ears will get turned 180 degrees.  That used to be Moe's job.  The boys get to work, starting with knocking the guy down so that he lands ass first into an ass-sized bucket of water.
Larry gets to work with the seemingly simple task of elevating the rear of the car using a "comedy jack."  It uses a pumping motion to lift the car but it can't seem to hold its place.  Larry has to hang on to the jack himself.  Moe arrives and gets into position.  Let the chin hammering begin!  (2:24)  In retaliation, Moe grabs Larry's nose with a wrench, doing a slow waltz for a while, and pushes him away so that Larry lands in a big pile of car parts.  That's fair.  Moe feels vindicated, anyhow, that's the main thing.  Meanwhile, Curly tries to start the car, while Moe goes right from Larry's nose to the car's tailpipe.  Moe gets a violent burst of soot in his face at about 2:56.5.  This is the kind of thing you have to watch at least twice, just to get accustomed to the suddenness of it all.  I had to, anyway.  Moe ends up with a Lone Ranger-type "mask" of soot on his face.  Curly thinks he's a burglar.  ...that's right, I'm skipping stuff now!  Can't hack it anymore.
Awright, back to work.  Time to focus on Curly.  Curly's doing battle with the hood of the car.  Not only is it hard to lift, but it keeps slamming back down!  Almost like the jaws of a "navigator"!  Love the callback.  Not quite, but the car's hood does bark like a dog, in addition to slurping up Curly's crowbar.  Curly knocks the cap off the radiator, and of course finally gets the hood open this time, only to get a faceful of water.  Curly starts getting his arms chewed off by the hood until Larry intervenes.  Larry must've been having a bad day, and gets impatient with Curly, storming off to start the motor so Curly can find the squeak.
And now, for a sequence that's somehow worse than Moe getting a climber's spike in the face.  Larry starts up the car, while Moe's under the rear wheel, hammering at God knows what.  The rear wheel starts spinning.  Moe's on a skateboard-type thing that guys rest on when they're under cars... Okay, I admit it!  I don't know the lingo.  Anyway, Moe has less traction than mere pavement, and he goes sailing backwards, landing head-first into a giant pipe... might as well take an Act Break here, because this is going to take a while.

ACT TWO

So Moe's head is still in the pipe.  The boys try to pry him out by jamming a crowbar down into the pipe with him.  It gloriously fails.  We get to see Moe's fillings.  It's Moe v. crowbar for about 45 seconds.  Spoiler alert: the crowbar wins.  Curly tries the anvil.  Curly lets out a mighty N'yuk n'yuk at about 5:54, and fails to get the pipe off with a sledgehammer.  Now the part I hate.  They put the pipe next to the fire and let Moe cook for about 20 seconds.  Larry touches the pipe and singes his fingers.  So what's Moe's head?  Chopped liver?  Might as well be at this point!  Time to put the pipe in cold water.  Now, time to put the pipe in a chain-based vice and yank it off.  At 7:04, Curly uses his normal voice to say "Brace him up!  I'll pull his legs."  Moe gets the comedy neck for a couple seconds.  He eventually gets "twisted" out, and ends up with spiral marks on his face.  Time for swift retribution.  Larry and Curly run to safety next to the car's windshield.  Moe grabs a hammer and throws it at Larry and Curly, but must still be disorientated from his pipe ordeal.  The hammer goes into the windshield.  Cross-fade to next scene.  Needless to say, this is another one of those times when time is stretched to make a 16 minute Stooge short.
Next scene: we see that the Stooges have completely removed the engine.  For some reason, this reminds me of It's A Bird (1930).  Larry tries to act like Professor Moe, but the actual Moe himself steps in.  Speaking of impeccable timing, the dude from before's coming back to get the car!  His name's Kelly, incidentally.  The boys start shoveling the engine parts back into the car.  It's not going to be like The French Connection, I'm afraid... at least, in terms of car reassembly.  Moe tries to stall the guy asbestos he can, but not for long.  He's in a hurry.  Curly mimes washing the windshield.  I hate to spoil what happens next... the car starts up!  Kelly thinks it sounds good!!  Kelly drives off.  The ruse breaks down, and the car leaves behind a big pile of engine parts.  There's no happy ending here, unlike that one Amazing Stories where the plane gets cartoon wheels to land on.  Kelly goes to look at the lack of engine.  He looks in closely.  The Stooges slam the hood down on him.  Kelly says "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"  The boys run away.  We hear Kelly say "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" exactly the same way as before, only quieter, because the Stooges are now in another part of the garage.  Commander Moe orders the boys into the sewer pipe... which turns out to be a bomb.  A self-closing bomb at that!  Moe starts getting suspicious at about 1:23.  LOL.  Time for some stock footage.  A bomb being loaded onto a plane.  A plane taking off.  Back to the Stooges, where Curly and Moe are nose-to-nose, practically kissing, and Larry's looking towards the camera, befuddled as can be.  Oh, the irony of it all.  They've gone from Moe's head stuck into a pipe to the three of them being stuck inside a bomb.  The bomb is dropped out of the plane. 
Next scene: four German soldiers getting lectured by Dick Curtis, who's doing a delightfully awful German accent.  He apparently gets crushed by the falling bomb... or does he?  The Stooges emerge, a little shaken up.  Kinda like the boys in the A-Team reboot.  I don't know how the Stooges did it: they weren't in a tank, and they didn't land in soft water.  The three climb out of the hole they're in.  Larry uses Moe's neck for leverage to get out, and rubs more salt into the wound by putting his legs on Moe's head.  As in Curly's quest for anything but beans in ... I think it was Back to the Front, Curly's hungry.  He spies a box of hand grenades and says "Ah!  An avocaddy's uncle!"  What is this, Castle Wolfenstein?  Boxes of hand grenades just lying around?  Puh-leeze.  At least it doesn't take Curly 255 seconds to open it, if you know what I mean.  Where's the schnapps and liebfraumilch?  Curly tries smashing two grenades together.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, Moe realizes it's a "bomb."  I tend towards un these days.  Curly throws it out the window, killing... I mean, comically wounding four "German" soldiers.  They're left wearing their swastika-laden P.J.s.  Larry enters from stage right and asks "What happened?"  Apparently, he didn't hear the giant, loud-ass explosion.  Moe skips that mild technicality, and says "'What happened?'  WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!"  If I only had a nickel for every time the Stooges said that.  Even if it's just Moe, I'd be doing pretty well for m'self...

ACT THREE

Larry and Curly try putting on the same uniform.  Curly's the greedy one this time, as he shoves Larry onto the couch.  Larry looks befuddled at first, then stares in wonder.  Cross-fade to Dick Curtis on the phone: "Vot?  Marshall Boring's here?  I'll be right out!"  Good line reading.  Lol.  Curtis leaves the room, while Moe and Curly enter it.  They start playing "checkers" with the map on the desk.  Curly makes a winning move and says "Crown me!"  Moe obliges, but uses the framed picture of Hitler to hit Curly on the head instead.  Moe picks up Hitler's head shot and says "Schicklgruber!"  Time for some Depression-era humour.  Vernon Dent, aka Marshall Boring, rides up on a child's scooter.  Curtis asks "Vere is your automobile?"  Dent says "You dumkopf!  I only have an A-card."  Ask your grandparents.  Or Wikipedia.
Moe and Curly try leaving the room as Vernon Dent and Dick Curtis enter.  Curly gives Vernon a strange Stooge salute, but Vernon only says "No vonder ve're retreating!"  Vernon and Dick go over to the desk.  Moe and Curly follow.  See, they're in Nazi uniform... ah, skip it.  Vernon looks at the post-Stooge checker game map, and starts getting pissed off.  Vernon slaps Curtis and says "Dumkopf!"  Curtis slaps Moe and says "Dumkopf!"  Moe slaps Curly and says "Dumkopf!"  Curly has no one to slap and says "No-kopf!"  What I want to know is... WHERE'S LARRY DURING ALL THIS?  Sigh.  Maybe he had a stroke or something.  Vernon tears the map in half and throws half of it away.  The half of the map lands on the chair with a bunch of pins sticking up.  Vernon sits on the chair and gets poked.  Another slapping chain ensues.  Vernon orders Curtis to get some wine. 
Finally!  Larry emerges in a Carmen Miranda-esque getup.  Vernon is instantly charmed.  Frankly, so am I... to a degree.  Get it together, Movie Hooligan!  (slaps face)  Vernon says "Come here, my little Edelweiss!"  Larry demures.  Moe encourages Larry to go over to Vernon, but with a giant shove.  Larry collides with Vernon, and they both fall over.  Larry grabs the "plans" in Vernon's coat and goes back over to Moe.  Larry says he's got the plans, and points to his own shirt.  Moe starts to reach in and get the plans.  Larry, still in character, slaps Moe.  Moe slaps Larry.  Vernon intervenes: "How DARE you slap a voman!"  Vernon winds up to pitch a slap to Moe, but hits Larry instead.  Larry falls into the next room, then next to the hole the empty bomb made earlier.  Larry plies his fake feminine wiles on Vernon, lines Vernon up with the bomb hole, and throws him in at just the right ironic moment.  Too easy.  Larry gets his dress torn as Vernon falls.  Larry has trouble leaving the room, as Moe and Curly seem to be pulling the door shut.  Larry eventually emerges by giving the door a good ramming, which knocks Curly onto the floor.  He lands with that same "oof" noise at about 7:42.  Did I tell you that they use it in Gymkata, for Gawd'z zake?  Well, they do.  Dick Curtis finally gets it: the Stooges are spies.  Moe and Larry disappear behind the door, leaving Curly exposed.  Dick Curtis grabs a rifle with bayonet and starts to go after Curly.  What Dick Curtis doesn't know is that Curly's got the picture of Hitler stuck to his ass.  Curly turns away from Dick Curtis.  Curtis sees the pic of Hitler on Curly's ass and stops and salutes.  Get it?  Good, because this is going to happen for the rest of the picture.

EPILOGUE

Close enough.  But we do find out that dogs aren't so dumb after all.  A bulldog wearing a "U.S. Marines" banner takes a bite out of the Hitler picture.  Curly's ass is mere collateral damage.  Curly runs off at about 8 fps with the dog attached.  Somehow, these WWII Stooge shorts don't get better the more of them they make, but I'll still give it three and a half stars anyway, if only because of Dick Curtis.  Over and out!

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

Auteur Watch - Lana and Andy Wachowski

Oh, Laurence... Well, you can't argue with box office receipts.  They're like a big box office Coen brothers somehow, and they're not afraid to say it in their films, either!  Their first big break was the disastrous Assassins.  I blame the usually reliable Richard Donner for that one.  Sylvester Stallone?  Seattle?  What were you thinking?  Somehow, the combination of Sylvester Stallone and Seattle was box office cyanide.  Ultimately, I guess I can't blame Donner.  For God's sake, he was 65 at the time!  He's just thankful for waking up in the morning in an un-crapped bed.  However, the Wachowskis were still on the make.  They're the next generation, and they rose up and said to themselves, we can direct this crap better than anyone!  That's the attitude you need.  And next came Bound, still considered Jennifer Tilly's best work... I'm assuming.  Maybe make it a double bill with The Getaway.
Still, recouping the budget wasn't enough for the brothers W.  And so, with the internet still rising, we get 1999's The Matrix, the coolest commercial for wi-fi ever.  The sky's the limit now.  The gates of Warner Brothers studios open forever.  They were stuck, however... what to do next?  A studio chief's got it!  Why not do like Back to the Future and do two sequels simultaneously?  Give the people more of what they want: more of that cool 3-D crap!  More bullets, more swooshes, more flying falderal, more bendy buildings!  And more of that Agent Smith guy.  He's got something...
And so, those came and went.  What else you got, guys?  Well, there's V for Vendetta, but they're tired of directing all that R-rated stuff.  We'll do the green-screen-centric Speed Racer ourselves.  You know, the real prestige stuff.  It was still worth it, haters!  John Goodman!  Susan Sarandon!  Christina freakin' RICCI, for Gawd'z zake!  Still, time to take a few years off to think about what to do next.  And we've got projects!  We got Cloud Atlas, I Love You and something called Jupiter Ascending.  Why does it make me think of Andrew Niccol?  He's got a vaguely similar pipeline at this point.  Anyway, keep the genius coming, guys!

Oh, right! Battleship...

Welp, it's a few hours before the box office receipts come in to the IMDb, so we'll just have to wait and see if Baron Cohen's latest media blitz paid off............... Nah, distant 3rd.  But maybe it'll have staying power, who knows?

Two Broke Brits

You know, there's that old story about the country mouse and the city mouse.  The moral of that story, of course, is that the city is a bloodsucking vampire, slowly choking the life out of the country, only to lead to its own inevitable downfall.  Something like that.  In Handmade Films' Withnail and I, two city boys go to wreak havoc on the country, but one of them gets more than they bargained for.  I dare not spoil it any more than I already have.  What does THAT tell you about a 25 year old film?
And yet, I find myself resisting the urge to give it four stars.  After all, what gets four stars these days?  The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, The Shawshank Redemption, Manos: The Hands of Fate, what have you.  I'm just not the fan of self-destructive behaviour I used to be, and shame on me for that.  Perhaps that's due to the duo involved.  There's Withnail, the raving drunk, and "...and I" aka Marwood, an obsessive-compulsive type who doesn't seem to enjoy life all that much.  For a second there I was thinking that perhaps they're two halves of the same character, like Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in Fight Club, but I actually took the time to read all of the IMDb trivia about Withnail.  Apparently, Withnail's based on Vivian MacKerrell, who seemed to be the live-fast-die-young type, as well as an unfortunately frustrated actor.  What, no cameo in The Killing Fields?  Where's the helping hand here?
These two share a flat in downtown London and seem to be visibly deteriorating before our eyes, especially in the confines of their messy kitchen.  Marwood does have some input in their collective destiny and he decides they need to get out of the city and go to the country.  Withnail has an eccentric uncle named Monty who has a country home in Penrith.  They get the key after much fuss, especially over Monty's cat, and head out into the rainy night.  I hate to spoil any more, but I will say that Withnail and he barely make a go of it until Monty himself shows up lugging much food and provisions.  However, Monty's largesse comes with a price tag...
My favorite moment would have to be when the two go into the fancy tea shop for cake.  The old man keeps trying to kick them out but Withnail insists on staying.  He breaks out laughing at one point.  God bless Bruce for keeping it in.  It's all about going with the flow, as one of the other characters says.  I believe it was Danny who I remember best from Wayne's World 2.  Surjik must've told him to just do what he did in Withnail.  And of course, being a George Harrison production, it would be frankly incomplete without a George Harrison song, and While my Guitar Gently Weeps will do just fine... just as long as it's historically accurate, hint hint.
Yeah, Bruce Robinson's had an interesting career.  I hope he's doing okay for himself.  Like most people, he seems to have taken most of the Dubya Administration off to find himself.  Well, Harold Becker's the only other one I can think of right now.  Kevin Spacey seemed to go missing as well, Superman 5 aside.  A non-alcoholic toast to triple threat Bruce Robinson, writer / actor / director extraordinaire!

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

Moral: a tontine is a bad idea

Unfortunately, my quasi-narcoleptic ways continue lately when it comes to ol' fashioned movie watching.  I fell asleep during part of The Wrong Box, but I saw the most crucial scene, fortunately.  More on that later.  Now, I'm not familiar with Bryan Forbes' directing oeuvre, but aside from the original Stepford Wives it appears to be a bit craptacular, sorry to say.  Not my cup of tea, anyhow.  That's just me.  But The Wrong Box is pretty okay in my book!  Most directors would be lucky to have a fine film like this on their résumé.
Of course, it was a different era.  A viewing companion of mine pointed out that it seemed more like an American production than a British one.  Take the epic train crash, for example.  Looked kinda expensive!  I just hope it turned out to Larry Gelbart's liking.  He was kinda picky.
The plot.  If you're like me, you learned about a tontine in one particular Simpsons episode... The film starts with a tontine involving about twenty boys, maybe more.  We then get a montage of comedy deaths.  A bit monotonous after a while, no two ways about it.  We then come down to the last two participants: two brothers, Joseph and Masterman Finsbury.  We're also introduced to the various characters that inhabit the space around them, mostly Peter Cook, Dudley Moore (Team Joseph), and Michael Caine and the scrumptious Nanette Newman (Team Masterman).  Lots of stuff happens, and it's like a Swiss freakin' watch.  I dare not spoil it anymore than I already have, so let me just say that the film was worth it for Peter Sellers.  If you're like me, you've memorized Dr. Strangelove to death, and of course Strangelove himself is one of the great comic creations, perhaps ever.  Dr. Pratt is another.  He plays the doctor that one of the characters has to go to in order to get an illicit death certificate.  When Dr. Pratt asks "Is it night or day?"  Well, you had me at 'Is it night or day,' let's put it that way.  God bless YouTube!  Pratt #1, Pratt #2.  That's about all I can say about it.  Three stars for the movie, four stars for Dr. Pratt.

***1/2 (**** for Peter Sellers)
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

p.s. Spoiler Alert: If you can't see the whole movie, the plot is summed up at the end, if rather abruptly.

Gas Food Lodging 2: The Gas-Food-Lodgening

So many movies to review!  So little time.  Finally remembered this one... damn, there's another to do after this.  I'll be brief, because I've grown up with Steve Buscemi, and arguably, for the Gay '90's, he WAS and still IS indie cinema.  Reservoir Dogs, In the Soup, Fargo, the list goes on and on.  I think his best work was as Buscemi in 1995's Desperado.  I understand he barely beat out Willem Dafoe for the part.
And so, bearing all that in mind, even though I'm barely not myself, we've got Saint John of Las Vegas.  There's two things you have to know about Steve Buscemi: 1) he gets beat up a lot in movies... and hard.  And 2) he's not usually the leading man.  He's usually the best friend, or the funny-looking guy who gets put into a woodchipper.  This film violates both rules.  I guess I hate to admit it, but the film succeeds despite violating these rules.  And, arguably, Boardwalk Empire, for that matter.  Too much change in this world.  I can't take it.
On to the plot.  I dare not spoil too much of the plot out of respect, but let me just say that I couldn't help but agree with the black dude's points at the end of the movie.  It's a bit of a buddy pic.  The film keeps its indie cred by making the buddies not like each other.  Romany Malco, well... I can't tell if he had fun with the part, but he did have a presence.  As an actor, he's not a fraud.  My viewing companion really liked Peter Dinklage as the boss, and damn it, so did I.  I just hope he didn't have to spend time with a lot of slimy, greasy people like that in order to research the role.  And let me just say this about Sarah Silverman... why her?  Nobody else could do that role?  Why?
I understand that Buscemi wasn't the first pick for the lead, but Willem Dafoe was unavailable at the time.  Must've been working on Antichrist at the time.  When are Dafoe and Buscemi going to make that buddy road pic together?  You know, the one about having to get a wax statue of Elvis from Vegas to Graceland in 48 hours.  The only way they can get it there, however, and here's the twist... they have to drive it in a powder-blue '57 Chevy... sorry, I segued into casting there.  The plot.  The plot involves investigation of a car accident.  I hope I'm not spoiling anything by saying that it turns into a labyrinthine plot that verges slightly into shaggy-dog territory.  But somehow I got the feeling that writer/director Hue Rhodes didn't have enough faith in the material on its own merits.  It needed a little more skin.  The car accident victim is a stripper.  We get shots of Romany Malco flanked by a group of about five or six strippers.  There's a long pitstop at a carnival for some reason.  The colony of nudist Luddite Second-Amendmenters is somewhat original, but they're still nudists.  And, of course, the whole story's told in flashback.
Let me just say this in defense of solar power.  The boys make a habit of sleeping in the car overnight.  They end up in front of a bank of solar panels.  The solar panels end up blinding them as the sun rises.  I don't think that would happen, and I mean getting blinded by solar panels at ground level, let alone being able to just drive up to them like that.  Solar panels are getting stolen off houses now!  There's going to at least be a fence around a big installation like that.
That's all I can remember about STJL at the moment.  I'm hoping to procure a copy on DVD pretty soon, as I want to study the stripper scenes a little more closely.  Of course, Windows is putting the kibosh on watching DVDs on your computer.  Pressure from big Hollywood, I guess.  DAMN YOU, WINDOWS!  I'll have to switch to Linux now.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Jonathan Hensleigh's "GoodFellas"

For some reason, I obsess over the screenwriters behind 1998's other big Large-Object-Headed-For-Earth movie Armageddon.  There's five of them: J.J. Abrams, who's gone on to be one of television's brightest producers/directors, and probably damn close to joining the neo-billionaires club if he's not there already.  There's Shane Salerno who appears to have taken most of the Bush Administration off to find himself.  There's Tony Gilroy who seems to be the only one of the lot who's gone on to at least try to do more prestigious work.  There's Robert Roy Pool who seems to have vanished after the apex of Armageddon; probably turned into too big of a control freak on his next project, and the whole thing collapsed on him.

Finally, there's Jonathan Hensleigh, who finally got tired of just doing the comic book-type stuff, so he decided to do a honest-to-God true crime story... even though he still seems to be clinging to the comic book theatrics a bit.  It's 2011's Kill the Irishman, the true story about wannabe mobster Danny Greene, a man so smart he would read just about anything.  A man so masculine he became union leader just by slapping a dude in the face over and over again.  And not just any dude, mind you, but Warden Norton himself!  That's right!  (sidebar: Shawshank is #1 right now, edging out losers like The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Pulp Fiction and Lord of the Rings 3.  I'm sure this has been accounted for already somewhere else on the web, but for me it merely represents peoples' sincere hopes and wishes that their stay in prison will go as swimmingly as Dufresne's eventually does.)
Where was I?  Oh, right.  Kill the Irishman.  Well, even though it's a production of Overture Films: a Starz! company, and most of the cast seemed to be plucked right out of every movie showing on Starz! this month, I was nonetheless entertained.  I don't know why everyone else is hatin' on this film so much.  Sure, the 60s and the 70s are overexposed in cinema these days, and sure, the mob genre's been done to death at this point.  But this may be the closest Ray Stevenson gets to a once-in-a-lifetime role, and the guy does take on a gaggle of Hell's Angels.  They're behind a wall of doors just like the Bumpuses in It Runs in the Family (1994).
Sadly, Danny finds that his punch-first-ask-questions-later philosophy of life doesn't open all doors for him.  I thought the most poignant sequence was when... I can't remember the whole context now, but Danny survives one particularly big brush with the bigwigs... no, I think it's the part where Nardi swears he will be his partner by killing the kid in the trunk of his car, and we cut to 1977 and Danny's still on the streets in his Levi's jacket, just before Nardi himself gets taken out by the mob.  Life just got too expensive, and he wasn't able to save enough to join the big leagues, or perhaps he was hoping the big leagues would come to him.
Either way, the movie not only has comic-book roots, it bends the truth a li'l bit.  Never forget that Danny was skimming union dues for his own personal gain.  The movie kinda whitewashes over that.  And according to a documentary about Greene, Sneperger was killed because he ratted to the cops, not because of "gambling debts."  Or maybe that was just code for "ratted to the cops."  Okay, never mind.
A few more observations: the explosions.  There were several explosions in this movie.  While I applaud the CGI people, as it would seem that CGI explosions and CGI fire have come a long way, I can nevertheless spot the digital "strings," so to speak.  We need to solve global warming, if for no other reason than to let Hollywood set off actual explosions again.  The last gripe I can think of: we all love Christopher Walken for various reasons, especially for his performance in 1995's Wild Side... but please!  Too much cowbell, Ronald!  Whatever fragile illusion or spell the film was casting, it vaporized when Chris appeared.  I'm sorry, but it did.  I'm just sayin'.
Epilogue: the film informs us that, well... you thought Cleveland went to hell while Greene was alive.  Apparently, Greene was the glue holding the city together.  Things went to hell some more after he was finally, officially killed.  (Damn you, Robert Davi!!!)  In a profession like Greene's, sometimes that's all you can hope for, legacy wise.  He passes on the cross given to him by the old woman to the next generation... but doesn't get all emotional over it, if you know what I mean.

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

Love and Death in Boring Oxford

...or is it Cambridge?  One of those snooty towns you hear so much, yet read so little, about!  At least, I do, anyway.  Yes, it's time to look at a slick turd called The Oxford Murders.  No disrespect to the talented people involved.  Why, I think even Jamie Kennedy himself would agree that this one could've used a slunky or two... never mind.  Don't Google that or urbandictionary.com it, by the way.
I think the problem is similar to the problem with Canadian Bacon and Getting Away With Murder.  With those two films, most of the stretches of dialogue seemed to be tailored to one character, yet shared among different people.  In Canadian Bacon, for example, there's the big scene where the high army brass discuss why attacking Canada is a good idea.  To me, it seemed more like a Michael Moore speech to be delivered in a TV Nation bit.  The problem with the whole script of The Oxford Murders seemed much worse than that: the film is not as smart as it thinks it is.  Also, it commits a unique sin by renaming Fermat's Last Theorem.  Here, it is called Bormat's Last Theorem, but they don't go so far as to change the formula itself for the movie.  To the screenwriters' credit, Podorov's dropping the name of Taniyama was apt, as he was involved in the lead-up to Andrew Wiles' eventual unveiling.
So, while some may find the script stimulating, I found it to keep consistently missing the right marks.  Also, I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't have to rewatch the movie, as with The Sixth Sense.  For some reason, nothing was sticking.  Also, I found it rather strange that Elijah Wood and John Hurt were spending so much time in the police station.  And John Hurt had reservations about appearing in Indiana Jones 4.  Shame on him!  I hear he's going to do a buddy road pic with Helen Mirren.  They could play brother and sister!  They have to drive from Vegas to Graceland in a powder blue '57 Chevy with a wax statue of Elvis in the back.  Along the way, the statue melts in the hot desert sun... but they find out the truth about themselves along the way, and isn't that the only thing in this world that matters?
The movie wasn't entirely without charm, though.  As I stared into the bright blue twin lakes that are Elijah Wood's eyes, I couldn't help but think of Gene Wilder, but without his blond curls.  Then, as the plot spread out before me, I couldn't help but next think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with Elijah Wood as Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Cox as Juliette Binoche, and Leonor Watling as Lena Olin... you know what I'm talking about, right, guys?  Unfortunately, especially for the ladies, Elijah didn't quite put out the same vibe that Daniel did.  You're just too damn nice, Eli!
Spoiler alert: To show my ignorance, I thought the fourth shape in the sequence was going to be a square.  Apparently, the bowling pin arrangement makes more sense.  It's also used in medicine, apparently.  The film also gets credit for appearing to be on film rather than crappy HD videotape... but not that much credit.  If I had to retitle this movie, I might call it Agatha Christie's The Murder Mystery That was Too Boring to Solve. 

Interesting bit of trivia: did you know that John Hurt was in V for Vendetta, which also had a Guy Fawkes theme?... sorry, I told a fib.  It's actually not that interesting.

**
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Firearm Madness

Just a reminder that it's not all Stooge shorts.  I forget myself sometimes.  Take 1950's Gun Crazy, formerly known as Deadly is the Female... boy!  That Robert Osborne left out a lot of the best trivia about this one!  screenwriter Dalton Trumbo using a front man, leading man John Dall later appearing in Spartacus... It's considered a classic now, but it seems kinda clunky to me somehow.  Or I probably just don't have the proper appreciation for it.
I'll touch on the plot a little bit.  We start off with a young boy breaking a shop window and grabbing the guns from the store display.  We find out the one dimensionality of the kid in court.  He's not a bad kid, he's just got a thing about guns, his older sister tries to explain.  Two other kids act as witnesses to back up the sister's claims.  The judge is moved, but there's still the matter of the theft and property damage.  Off to reform school with you!
Next scene: the kid's all growed up, still loves guns, and is thinking about getting a job at Remington.  His friends are grown up, too: one's a cop, and one's a reporter for the Cashville Rag.  My dad always complains about movies like this.  Usually there's a family of brothers who end up in diametrically opposed professions: one's a mobster, one's a priest, one's a cop, that kind of deal.  The three of the Gun Crazy boys go to the circus, where they watch a cute girl who's handy with a pistol.  Love at first lead for Barton Tare.  There's an on-stage courtship, there's fighting for the girl's hand in marriage, and on and on... they say this was loosely based on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, but it still seems too much like one of those bad documentaries about what can happen to a person with that one fatal character flaw.  To its credit, it has some nice stylistics, such as the Spielbergian dolly shots that zoom up to a person's face.  Also, there's a GoodFellas-like one-take sequence with a bank robbery.  Sure, the camera's stuck in the back of the car the whole time, but they do have that short dolly track, and they make the most of it.  Maybe if I see this again sometime, it will gain in tenure for me.  Hard to say.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

They seem like rather BIG twerps to me!

With nose to the blogstone, it's time for the next Stooge short, Three Little Twerps.  Judging from the description, I can't recall offhand if they've done a circus picture before this one, but it won't be the last.

ACT ONE

The boys are putting up a poster.  Moe says "This is one job we're going to do right!"  Self-aware Stooges?  It's a slippery slope, I tells ya.  Moe slugs the other two in the gut at the same time for saying "Right!" too much.  Makes perfect sense.  Larry stumbles away and gets a shot at the camera.  He finds a reason to clown around: the horses on the poster.  He asks one of them if they're hungry and hands it a carrot.  The horse responds!  The horse sucks the carrot through the poster!  MAGIC!  Hmm... that horse sounded familiar... why, it's Curly, emerging from behind the poster's wall!  With a carrot, of all things.  I never figured him for a health food nut.  Meanwhile, Moe gets a face full of Larry's brush.  For once in his professional life, Moe says "I beg your pardon!"  He might have before, maybe in Hoi Polloi, but I can't think of it.  Larry confuses Moe for someone else, and who wouldn't with his new chin-do.  Larry bellows "Beat it, grandpa!  We got no time for kibbutzers!"  Larry discovers the truth, and is rightly seeking forgiveness, but only makes matters worse for himself, and confuses the audience on top of it all, when he says "Sorry, Moe!  I didn't know your face was there!"  Moe strikes with two swipes of a wide white brush and says "I didn't know yours was there, either!"  A similar moment like that happens during the Shemp years, when the boys are in yet another warehouse full of boxes.  Larry clonks Moe on the head, runs around a stack of boxes and ends up on Moe's other side, and launches into "Moe!  I just beat up one of the bad guys!  Right where you're standing now!  He was standing right here, and..."  Moe hits Larry, Larry sinks to the ground, and Moe says "Now YOU'RE right there!"  I kinda prefer that one, but you can't have it all.  Back to Curly who's scrubbing away on the poster.  Time for Moe to get the business end of the handle of another tool.  Moe grabs onto the handle rather than suffer getting hit in the face many more times.  Curly realizes what's going on, gets scared, lets out a giant "NYAAA-AAAH!" then turns indignant immediately and says "Hey!  Why don't you get your own tools?"  Moe's very sinister in this one!  He quietly through gritted teeth says "I just wanna borrow it."  It is apparently some kind of hoe with the blade parallel to the handle instead of perpendicular.  Moe starts browbeating Curly about the face with it until he plum falls right through the poster.  Perfect chance for Larry to scold Moe, and for once Moe is practically speechless, saying that he'll fix it?  Where's the physical violence in return?  No time for that, as the plot thickens.  A car approaches... ooh, this is gonna be good.  It's the boss!  He sees the poster with the giant Curly-sized hole in it.  His eyes widen.  He slams the car door on his hand.  Some extra time for the Stooges!  The backup poster is put into place: the Wild Man of... Manx?  I couldn't see it.  The important thing is that it's a poster of a gorilla with a giant Curly-sized head.  The actual Curly head pokes its way through after getting a faceful of plaster paste.  The boss comes up and says "Nice work, boys.  That Wild Man looks uglier every time I look at him!"  Curly says "Hmmmm!!  I resemble that."  The boss says to Larry "What did you say?"  Take note of this moment, as usually it's the other way around.  Someone behind the Stooges is usually the one making the noise and it's Moe who usually says "What're you farting about?"  ...forgive me.  The Stooges were a class act, and they never used the word 'fart.'  Or 'belch' for that matter, probably.  The new Stooge movie that's currently dying a slow death in theaters, on the other hand, well... all that PG allows.  Larry has a stellar moment when he says "Oh, that's my asthma.. HMMM!!!"  Moe elbows him and says "Never mind your asthma.  How about our pay, boss?"  Dude!  The way Moe says it, seems like Moe's the boss!  The 'boss' boss informs the Stooges that the currency he uses is ... wait for it ... circus tickets!  Sheesh.  Moe and Curly each get one ticket.  Curly asks "Hey!  What about my ticket?"  The jig is up.  Moe and Larry take off running, as they seem to do in every one of these flicks, while Curly slowly backs out of the hole his head once occupied.  The boss gets closer, close enough within eye poking range.  Curly lets loose with two fingers and damn near actually pokes the guy in his eyes, and rips the guy's hair or hat just for good measure.  Emboldened, Curly comes around to the front of the poster, steps onto a plank, and lets fly the paste-filled bucket, which lets out a mighty TWANGGGGG noise at 2:54.  The likes of which we won't hear again until A Bird in the Head, and even that one's slightly different.  The bucket lands onto Curly's head, and he pulls it off with a mighty SHOOP sound.  Dude, that bucket musta hurt a little bit!  Just before the scene fades out, Curly looks up at the crew guy who dropped the bucket.  Painful.
Next scene: a circus from a better movie.  We get a long dolly shot of busy stands and crowds of people.  We get another shot of a big crowd, with the camera holding still this time.  Next shot: the Stooges erupt from the crowd, with Curly holding a balloon on a stick, not just a string.  Moe kinda looks like he's got lipstick on, but upon closer examination it's a cigar.  Larry doesn't have anything!  Typical.  To make matters worse, Moe plans on scalping the tickets they got.  Curly's balloon gets popped, he runs off, and ... LET THE SCALPING BEGIN!  A crowd gathers around as Moe starts his sales pitch.  Meanwhile, Curly ends up at a very, very high ticket booth.  A thick roll of tickets lands on his head.  A guy above him says "Oh, could you hand me that roll, please?"  Wiseguy.  Ever the bastion of dignity, Curly says nothing and hands the guy the roll.  The end of the roll, however, is still dangling down, and therefore up for grabs, and like the proverbial toilet roll, Curly walks away trailing tickets behind him.  He finally realizes what has happened, basks in his newfound glory, and begins HIS sales pitch in earnest: "Here y'are, folks!  Gitcha tickets right here..."  You'll see this later on in Crash goes the Hash.  Now, here's the econ lesson of the day: Moe and Larry's price is 75 cents.  Curly drops his to 50 and quickly steals Moe's and Larry's customers.  It's just simple math, folks.  Which is why Moe approaches Curly and uses that sinister deep voice again!  "I'll take 90 tickets, please."  Curly says "90 tickets!  Wow, that's quite a family... NYAAAAHHH..."  Moe takes charge and this fly-by-night marketplace finds a new equilibrium price.  The customers sit back and take it, of course, greedy bastards that they are.  And then, just like in GoodFellas when the cops close down young Henry's cigarette shop, the buzzkills swoop down: Officer Bud Jamison and the boss man from before.  Curly shoots the works on them, with Moe and Larry on chin detail, and another chase begins.  Moe and Larry run past, while Curly uses his pivot foot and enters a tent.  Boy, I wish he didn't do that..........

ACT TWO

A good time as any for an act break: about 5:20 into the proceedings, usually.  Enter the Bearded Lady.  Curly gets very, very weirded out by her, but she develops a strong instant crush on Curly, her "bald-headed eagle."  Curly says "You remind me of a girl in Detroi-it... but you look more like her stepfather."  The Bearded Lady goes in for a hug.  Curly feels her beard on his face and lets out a loud "NYAA-AAAAH!" and takes off.  Curly tries to leave the tent, but sees the fuzz outside.  Rock and a hard place, folks.  The bearded lady goes in for a second attack, and the camera dollies backwards, emphasizing the horror of it all.  Curly takes matters into his own hands, along with a pair of scissors.  All this fooling around... and it's almost time for the Bearded Lady to take the stage.  The boss enters the tent saying "Effie!  Effie!  Where are you?"  I hate to spoil the surprise... but you can probably guess what it is.  Moving on...............

Next scene: Curly enters another tent-like room, and spies a giant chest in the middle of the room.  Moe's already hiding in it, however.  Curly slams the chest lid on Moe's head and takes off the other way, right into Larry.  Larry clutches his chest and gets pissed off at Curly.  Curly retaliates, grabbing a big tuft of Larry's hair.  That kinda came out of left field!  It's not some fuzzy plant, guys!  It's human hair!  It doesn't just grow back... anyway, no time for that.  The fuzz approacheth once againe.  Time for Larry and Curly to team up to hide... but how?  And where?  I hate to spoil another surprise, but they stumble upon a horse costume.  Curly takes charge: "I'll play the head and shoulders, and you play the other part."  Larry looks offended, and rightly so.  The boys emerge from the tent in the horse costume, knocking down the circus boss for good measure, who gets a big face full of sawdust.  The Larry and Curly horse venture out into the world, whinnying with glee.  They stumble upon two actual horses and walk up to them.  The horses back away as far as they can.  Some slight bonding occurs between the black horse and the Larry and Curly horse.  Well, you know what they say: horses of a feather flock together.... uh oh, the sleeping pill's starting to kick in, so I better call it a night.  Will I EVER get through this damn Stooge short?
...okay, back to work, and time to crank up the tension in the plot.  The arch bad guy, Stanley Blystone, is still asking around about the Stooges.  He's talking to this cross-eyed nerdy guy who has a giant meat cleaver.  He hasn't seen the Stooges but he does point out that there's no more lion meat.  "What do you think the horses are for?"  Mission accomplished.  The guy goes over to the Larry and Curly horse, saying "You look like lion food!  Come with me."  Never mind that killing a horse during business hours would probably be bad for business.  At least, I know I'd have trouble turning it into an exhibit, but the show must go on.  The nerdy guy gets a gun and aims it at the fake horse's head.  The horse kneels down.  The nerdy guy lifts the fake horse's head back up.  The horse slowly turns around to kick the guy, who obliges by turning around so he can get kicked in the ass.  DOWN GOES NERDY GUY!  He gets back up and starts to shoot the horse in the horse's ass... but that wouldn't be fair to Larry.  The horse turns around, the guy shoots, and there's a giant bomb-sized explosion.  The barrel of the gun has split into four, and the nerdy guy's face is black from soot.  Spoiler alert: the horse is fine!  Time for plan B, involving a giant novelty sword.  The nerdy guy stabs the horse, and the giant blade flirts with Larry's nose.  Exasperated, the nerdy guy says "Hey!  You're supposed to fall down!"  The nerdy guy goes for the head this time.  The horse's head comes off, and Larry and Curly writhe around on the ground.  Curly sticks his head out of his costume and gobbles like a turkey.  The nerdy guy faints.  Moe rejoins the group and quickly takes charge, helping Curly out of his costume by putting his shoe on Curly's face and pushing.  The bad guys come around the corner and another big chase ensues... actually, the boys stand their ground this time!

ACT THREE

The bad guys close in.  Curly grabs two mallets of different shapes.  Curly carefully leans back and delicately hits Moe and Larry in their respective heads... or, at least, the space next to their heads (3:02).  Lol.  Curly, seeing what he has done, decides to knock himself out as well.  Usually this shtick happens at the end of the short, so this is a little off-putting.  Next scene: the boss' office, where justice is finally about to be done, and the Stooges are finally officially going to be taken away... but WAIT!  There's no volunteers for the Zulu spear throwing act!  Time for another One Last Chance, but the Stooges aren't told what it is.  They're excited nonetheless, the grown-up children that they are.  Larry says "Gee, thanks, boss!  You don't know what you're doing for us!"  The boss says "Oh, yes, I do!"  Gee, I hate it when Larry's the straight man.  Curly gives Officer Bud Jamison the ol' finger-snapping routine, hits his neck with his fingers, and gives him one last bark for good measure, yet still runs off like a coward while Bud reaches for his gun.
Next scene: more stock footage of a circus from a movie with a slightly bigger budget.  Then, we see the Stooges in strange circus costumes.  Larry points to a trapeze artist.  Finally, the big boss emerges in his fancy schmancy getup, and the boys finally realize what they're in for.  Enter the "untamed" Sultan of Abbadabba. (Duke York)  He's a snarling beast of a man, but he's still no match for the even more primal Curly, and he learns it fast.  The big boss starts whipping the Stooges into position.  Even the ropes conspire against the Stooges as they rise up and lower over them, fastening them into place.  We see the enthralled crowd... actually, they look kinda bored.  Back to the Sultan, who has a man with a pistol on each side of him.  The Sultan begins throwing spears at the scared Stooges.  Curly gets the first spear.  There's a drumroll that sounds vaguely like the one that Hanna and Barbera would use for the rest of their careers.  Curly's hat falls victim to the first spear, and Curly's on the verge of soiling himself.  Next volley: two spears.  The ringmaster looks disappointed that a Stooge hasn't been stabbed yet, so the ante is upped.  The Sultan throws eight spears BACKWARDS!  (5:59)  Curly's rope gets cut by one of the spears, so it's time to strike back.  With the Sultan's back turned, time for a spear in the ass.  Curly's spear merely bounces off the Sultan's glutes, but the Sultan jumps up and down in pain as if the spear stayed in place.  Shoestring budget on this one.  Curly gets in a good arf at the Sultan, and another chase is on.  The crowd stands up.  We follow Curly's "escape" as he heads for the ladder up to the tightrope.  The Sultan follows Curly, laughing as he also climbs the ladder.  Curly's in a tight spot on this tightrope!  Curly's having enough trouble staying on the rope as it is.  The Sultan starts shaking the rope, and Curly starts ... how to describe it... Curly starts spinning around the axis of the tightrope by his feet, starting at 7:17.  "Moe!  Larry!  Help me!  Help me!" he cries.  Larry points to what looks like a hand-held trampoline, and Moe and Larry grab it and head out to the space just under Curly.  To drive the point home, we see a second one with a hole in it.  Good directing, Harry Edwards!  Moe tells Curly to "let go", and Curly's feet abandon his shoes, which are still clinging to the tightrope.  Curly falls, sails through the "safety net", leaving a hole in the ground big enough for Moe and Larry to dive into after him.  The Sultan runs up and gets a big faceful of dust, or maybe it's steam, since the boys just may have ended up in Hell.  What an ending.

EPILOGUE

You know, there seem to be several Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons like this Stooge short....

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Heckling back...

Well, according to the imagery, somebody owes somebody some royalty payments!  I believe it's some sort of sports team... Anyway, you know, every once in a while an internet-based movie critic has to come to terms with what they do for a living.  And frankly, all this blogging is taking time away from my valuable occupation of sulking in my parents' basement.  But Jamie Kennedy's... I'm sorry, I mean Michael Addis' documentary Heckler is interesting for a couple reasons, if nothing else.  Why the Academy chose not to give it its highest honor is beyond me.
The HD video film mainly focuses on the personal struggles of protagonist Jamie Kennedy, whom I recall most fondly from Bowfinger, perhaps his best work, but I eagerly await seeing him as Mark Freeze in Tyler Perry's Spring 2012 project Good Deeds.  He confronts several of his critics, internet-based and otherwise.  I hate to kick a guy when he's down, but Gabe and Asher rocked!  As they themselves said, they're just trying to help you, Jamie.  The internet critics range from the one dude who said he had a 104 degree temperature when he saw the one movie, to one really obnoxious guy working for something called "Giant" online magazine.  I'm hoping he was just doing that for the camera.  You know, kinda like Snooki.  Would she be so slutty if the camera weren't on her?  I'm just jealous, of course, of those who spend their youth well.
In general, I found that the celebrities in Heckler I personally admire the most tended to have the more mature attitudes about hecklers, especially George Wallace who notes that no matter what happens, he gets the check at the end of the night.  What's interesting about this is that we get a chance to critique some comedians' heckler responses.  Jamie himself arguably gets a good one when he turns the tables on a heckler during a performance.  I'll side with Jamie on this one, as the kid only had jokes about teachers... on the other hand, he did seem to have the comic's focus.  Jamie could learn a thing or two about attitude from that kid.  I thought Jamie was an actor, anyway!  What's he doing dabbling in stand-up?  Arguably, what they showed of Brian Holtzman makes Kennedy's stuff look good in comparison.  Tarnished director Joel Schumacher complained about criticisms of Batman Forever.  Apparently he's given up defending Batman & Robin.  I liked Falling Down, for what that's worth!  I used to like the script...
This thing was entertaining enough, but somehow it feels lacking.  Sure, time is spent on the decline of criticism since the passing of Pauline Kael.  Frankly, I think the rise of cell phone usage is a much greater threat than heckling.  People are so into themselves these days.  The talent tide has risen a little bit, stranding more boats.  Go figure.  But Jamie's doing all right for himself, having found a sympathetic ally in Seth McFarlane's The Cleveland Show, and in his off time he hangs out at the video store asking people why they just walked on by Son of the Mask.  That, or why they made that weird noise when they did.
The documentary steps bravely into uncertain territory with Sean Young, who heckled Julian Schnabel at an event... my God!  An existential crisis!  What happens when a celebrity becomes the heckler?  Jamie doesn't get a chance to explore that too much, as it takes time away from him, but perhaps Sean and Jamie aren't so different after all.  What we are seeing now, or perhaps what has always been, is a rise of the Hollywood middle class, a greater number of once shining stars now filling out the suburbs, just trying to get by in painful anonymity on Spanish TV royalty payments.  It just hasn't been documented as well before... which reminds me.  Isn't Jamie a little bit hypocritical?  After all, what are stand-up comedians but critics of society and its many, many flaws?  He asks his manager at one point about the material he's not allowed to do at a Catholic school gig.  At one point he asks the manager "Can I call Ashton (Kutcher?) a f***ot?"  HECKLER!!!
Oh, and the documentary proves what I already suspected: Uwe Boll's a better boxer than filmmaker.  I will say nothing when they come to take him away.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

I've heard of them!  They're the Italian Coens.  We started watching Good Morning, Babylon until it got too naughty... man!  They're old!  Proving once again that directing films is a lifelong struggle.  Take Ridley Scott, for example.  Poor guy's about 75 now with a new action flick coming out.  As for the Tavianis, they got Caesar Must Die coming out.  Smart title strategy, guys.  If it's got Die in the title, Americans will flock to it, and it will save you from printing German posters.  Grazi!

Yeah yeah yeah...........................

Easier for me.  Now I can use the same photo... see that, Hunger Games?  That's how it's done.  A trusted brand, Marvel Comics, doing something never done before... a superhero movie!  I mean, one with a whole bunch of the lame ones in it!  Prohibitively expensive.  Reminds me of when Mrs. Krabappel was dumping Comic Book Guy by saying "You're Marvel, I'm D.C."  He then understood completely what was happening to him.
Meanwhile, there is no joy in the House of Burton, mighty Timmy only came in second.  The other debuts this week are The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Girl in Progress, which I don't care about.  Besides!  It's gone already, replaced by Jason Statham Spring 2012 project... I mean, Safe.  Ooh!  This italics craze is going to be a real game-changer for me!  Epic!  Iconic!

It's going to be a long war...................

ACT ONE

Despite the intro, the Stooges have wives in this one.  A dirty shame, indeed.  You'll notice that their wives, girlfriends and fiancées stay the same age, while the Stooges get older and older and older... take Pardon My Backfire, for example!  Meantime, I gotta stick with Back to the Future... I mean, Back from the Front.
We see how the backdrop of war wreaks havoc on otherwise lovely domestic situations.  We see the Stooges' girls all knitting together on the couch.  They think it's grandma knocking at the door.  Hard to say if they're disappointed or not.  I'd say slightly disappointed.  The Stooges go in for a kiss and miss, of course.  Moe and Larry kiss each other on the cheek, and Curly kisses the dog.  Curly barks at the dog.  The dog barks back!  They bark again!!  Make a note of that.  I can't remember the last time I saw that in a Stooge film.  A killer app, as we used to say.
And so, "Inky," "Blinky" and "Stinky" are off to work on a boat.  What about Pokey and Clyde, you might ask?  No time for that, it's time for the Stooges to do their victory dance.  Larry kicks Moe in the ass, while Curly does giant suggestive pelvic thrusts.  And you thought Elvis was bad!  Moe kicks Larry back, and Larry falls face first onto his duffel bag.  The boys run out, come back for their duffel bags, and Curly says "We forgot our duffels, bags!"  We're getting a great preview of what marriage is gonna be like with Ike Turner over here. Larry forgot his hat, but continuity will take care of that.
Scene: the ship itself, where... yup, the boys are seasick.  Not Curly, however.  He's happily eating a... a raw liver sandwich?  I think I'm going to throw up!  'Scuse me........ That's better.  Moe runs behind the cabin, and reaches for the bucket.  Later, he gets the mop.  See, you kids don't realize it, but this alone was very VERY controversial in its day.  For many decades vomit was a big no-no on the silver screen.  Today, the opposite prevails, of course.  If a movie made today doesn't have someone vomiting, the finest Hollywood script doctors are RUSHED IN!  Back to Curly, who now taunts Larry with the raw liver sandwich... scuse me again.  Larry runs off, then the camera dollies in a little closer on Curly, as if to signal what's coming.  Curly stops, falters a bit, then leans over the side of the boat.  Larry goes for an open window, and we hear Moe yell "HEY!!!"  Hays is still spinning in his grave, I'm telling you.
Fade to next scene, where the boys are painting ... something.  I gotta plead ignorance here, I don't know what the h.. what they're painting.  They seem to be painting the wall in a room, if for no other reason than to hit each other with paintbrushes for a couple minutes.  Not as blatant a time-stretcher as others, of course.  There's always that extra special ingredient when paint's involved to really get the blood pressure boiling.  We see Vernon Dent in a hammock, sleeping.  We see a smaller dog barking.  Curly's singing a song.  Vernon wakes up, hears the dog barking, and yells "SHUT UP!!!!"  Curly and the dog oblige.  Then, the paint fight begins in earnest.  Curly opens with a couple nice brush strokes on Moe, all while telling Larry "You know, I used to be a sign painter!"  He's painting Moe better than the signs now!  Moe's hair starts to turn white.  Moe finally brings order to the chaos.  Curly sticks out his tongue, only to get it painted.  Moe kicks... rather, gently pushes Curly's stomach with his foot, and Curly falls back into Vernon Dent, who rather abruptly tumbles headlong out of his hammock, making that same "oof" sound at the end of 3:36.  We get a handle on Vernon's accent... seems vaguely German somehow.... nah, that can't be it.  Vernon orders Curly away, the schweinhound!  Curly backs away doing that kick he does and yup... Moe lands face first onto the wall, getting a big cheekful of paint.  For some reason, Curly never has sympathy for Moe, and is always striking back.  Moe paints Curly, then Curly does the back-and-forth motion with his paintbrush and hits Moe TWICE!  Moe is clearly losing this paintfight, and he knows it, so he ups his game, grabbing a whole bucket.  You'll never guess where it ends up... yup.  Vernon pulls the bucket off his head, making a rather giant sucking sound at 4:07.  My God!  Perot was right!
Nobody makes an angry face better than Vernon Dent.  And when Vernon Dent's covered in white paint: priceless.  The boys decide to take a walk, but a running walk.  The cabin door shudders shut behind the Stooges, and Vernon seems to lock them out, if only for his own protection.  Next scene: the boys are walking past the window where Curly's about to get several facefuls of water.  Curly says "I can't hear a thing!"  Moe asks why.  Curly says "I ain't listenin'!"  Gut-head combo from Moe.  Now to the window.  Wotta Day time.  The first "Wotta day!" comes at 4:37.  The second one happens at 4:48; this one is trickier because Larry's now in the frame and they can't cut to an edit to do it.  Fortunately, the Stooges worked with the best prop guys and Curly gets another big faceful of water.  As with the previous film, Curly tries to give Larry the Wotta Day treatment, but it doesn't work on Larry.  Third W.D. at 5:03.  Curly finally uses his head and puts on a raincoat and rain hat.  The 4th WD hits at 5:17 but... it's not the same day.  Damn you, Mother Nature!  Always one step ahead.  Ever the scientist, Curly removes his protective raingear, opens the window, sticks his tongue out at the ocean, and gets the 5th WD at 5:26.8... okay, four and a half.  A paint-covered Moe thankfully intervenes before Curly gets pneumonia, and if you're anything like me... scary thought, I know... you can't help but think that maybe Moe should've gotten some of that water to wash some of that paint off.  No time for that, though.  Back to the plot of Back to the Front.
Next scene: Vernon Dent sneaks into a Comm room/bedroom, fiddles with some gadgets, and sends the signal to the German sub.  We see sub footage smuggled in from a better movie.  Cut to the Stooges, where Moe gives up.  Cut back to a torpedo being loaded.  Cut to a torpedo sailing under the water... with audio of a seltzer bottle to substitute for the sound of a torpedo sailing through the water!  Well, Walter Murch wasn't in the biz yet.  Cut back to a longer shot of the Stooges, and a torpedo erupting through the ship wall.  Screenwriters and editors take note: THIS is how you tell a story!  Sequences!  Sequential sequences!
Now, here's where I part company with the plot.  Curly confuses the torpedo for a whale.  Moe doesn't get caught up in Curly's fervor, but he of all the Stooges should've known better, telling Curly "Stop talking to it!  Let's kill it!"  But unlike Falling Hare, this blockbuster bomb goes off, even when you don't hit it just right.  Fade to white... a loud fade to white.  Fade to the Stooges on a tiny raft being towed by that small dog from before, with a giant rope around its neck.  Must be a very buoyant rope.

ACT TWO

The Stooges, bearded and groggy, are floating in the ocean on their tiny, tiny raft.  Having eaten nothing but beans since the ship inexplicably vaporized, Curly declares war on beans for the rest of his life.  Moe says "I hear a bell," but it's not the sea playing tricks on him.  There's a ship in the distance... let's go there now!  Bad filmmaking, guys.  We see Vernon Dent saluting Stanley Blystone.  Dr. Blystone, I presume!  I actually know him best as "Crook" from Slaphappy Sleuths.  "So!  You trailed me, eh?... OUCH!!!"  Classic.  This Nazi ship is stalled due to a faulty engine, giving the Stooges time to catch up to it and climb aboard.  We see the boys climbing up the side on that.... you know, a rope grid thing... Curly's stuntdouble's got the dog on his back.  The boys themselves are now on the ship's deck.  They're ready for food and friendly faces, especially Curly.  Moe wonders where everybody is and is just about to call, but Larry for once uses a bit of his brain!  A disguised raider!  Schickelgruber... a name forever conjoined to history and to Hitler.  Time for some strategy.  Larry says "Time to use the old bean!"  Curly earps, reaffirming his new anti-bean stance.  Never even SAY the word bean!  Don't say nest or egg either, while you're at it.  Moe slaps the hat off of Curly, Curly falls face down, gets back up, then Moe tells him "Shut up!"  That's got to be the longest period between Moe hitting Curly and Moe telling Curly to shut up, like.... EVER!  C'mon, you web sickos!  Who's keeping track of that shi... stuff?  The hitting continues.  Moe says "If we're discovered, we're lost!"  How low things have gotten when Curly has to correct Moe's grammer: "You're crazy!  If we're discovered, we're found!"  Now for a moment of cuteness: the boys crawl away.  We see the dog, and the dog crawls along on its belly as well.  Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.... Well, as they say, dog see, dog do!
The boys need to get some uniforms to blend in... just like the ol' Castle Wolfenstein game!  Why, I saw Wolfenstein 3D on the Yahoo! short list today.  I didn't read it, but I hope it's not another video game-inspired killing spree... nah, it's being released as a free in-browser game.  The former part will come later.  Also, another "Saved by the Bell" star is all growed up now.  I'm just hoping they haven't sunk to the lowest level like Screech.  Back to Back from the Front, where the boys' first customer approaches.  Moe hits the guy on his helmeted head.  We hear the usual head-hitting sound, but the German helmet's too effective.  The guy wonders what happened and takes his helmet off.  Second shot from Moe on the guy's bald head does the trick, and we get the appropriate bone-crunching sound this time.  Moe starts harvesting his uniform, while Larry and Curly ask "What about us?"  Actually, Curly asks "What about us?" in a non-comical voice.  Moe says "Go get some for yourself!" Well, just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there's a time to every purpose under Heaven: a time to share, and a time when it's every Stooge for himself.  Larry says, Moe-style, "Oh!  A hoarder, eh?"  Curly unhelpfully replies, "Well, hoarders is hoarders!"  A little something for us water-cooler-arounders.
It's hard to stay one second ahead.  While Larry and Curly are reaching for their head-bonking sticks, here comes two more Kraut sailors!  Down the ship steps they come, right over to the doorway where Larry and Curly are hiding.  The first guy's helmet was still rolling around on deck, but no time for continuity errors in this picture.  The game of arbitrage begins.  Larry kicks one of the sailors in the butt and runs off.  Let's call him Sailor #1.  So Sailor #1's butt got kicked, while Sailor #2's butt is kick-free... for now.  Damn!  I'm sorry.  SPOILER ALERT.  Sailor #1 asks Sailor #2, "Did you kick me?"  No, says Sailor #2.  The arbitrage antes are upped.  Larry AND Curly man a sailor's ass apiece, and kick!  Both sailors are ass-kicked simultaneously.  Both are steaming, and both turn.  Sailor #2 says "So!  Now you kick me!" and an epic fist-fight breaks out.  A real game changer.  They roll around on deck... now it's getting kinda gay.  Thank God the Stooges emerge at the right time and hit the sailors on the head with their long phallic-shaped batons.  As the cross-fade begins, they go in for a second floggin' of the sailors' noggins, but we don't get to enjoy the sound effects of that.  On to the next scene, where all three of the three Stooges are now in sailors uniform.  They emerge, almost one head at a time, from the same doorway, and head out into the world, much like Steven Seagal in Under Siege, to make the whole boat their bitch.  First big test: Vernon Dent walking by.  The three boys heil as he passes.  They realize who he is, and Curly's the one who articulates to us, the audience, that Vernon didn't recognize the Stooges with the beards... even though it's suspicious that there are now three German sailors on his boat with the same haircuts as the other three knuckleheads what knocked him out of his hammock and covered him in white paint.  There's a logical explanation for this, to be delivered later by the chief Nazi naval officer, tee hee hee.
Meanwhile, Curly's still hungry and wants to get a non-bean breakfast.  Moe and Larry head off to the right, Curly gets something out of the doorway, and runs stomach first into the stomach of German officer Bud Jamison.  Thank God all the "Germans" here speak broken English or the Stooges would be totally buggered for sure.  Jamison orders Curly to clean the ship's gun.  Jamison grabs Curly, kicks Curly in the ass, and Curly grabs his stomach in response.  My, but that's a powerful hunger pang!
Scene: gun.  Jamison hands Curly a giant swab.  Curly salutes while holding the swab and.... you, yup guessed it, hits Bud with the swab.  Bud storms off, giving Moe and Curly a chance to approach their fellow undercover Stooge.  The gun looks shiny, kinda like the sequence in 1941 with the grounded plane and Tim Matheson dropping the bomb out of it.  Moe promises to get Curly some breakfast, and Curly orders... I want to get this whole thing down for you, hang on... "Oh boy!  Make it turkey and ham, and candied sweet potatoes on the side, and hot bothered biscuits and honey, and smother the whole thing in fried chicken... but NO BEANS!"  Larry says "It's in the bag!"  What a tool.  Imagine Moe's reaction.  Moe should've hit Larry for leading Curly on like that, but instead arranges an elaborate pre-strike Semaphore routine.  Gotta keep it fresh.
Next scene: still at the gun, where Curly is toiling away on an empty stomach.  Moe approaches with a shiny plate of grub... BEANS!  He did that on purpose, but says "It's all these goose steppers have got."  No bienestich?  Thank God the war's over today and we can get back to the food.  Larry shows up a few seconds later, still leading Curly on.  Curly says "That's what I call a pal.  Roast turkey!  Stuffed breast, I love it... NYAAYAAAAAH!  Beans!  That's all I get is BEANS!  BEANNnnnNNNS!"  When Curly talks about beans here, he reminds me of Jay Leno... did he say stuffed breast?  Hays must be spinning in his grave.
As if the beans weren't bad enough, here comes another Nazi officer!  Moe orders Curly to ditch the beans.  They could just throw the beans over the side, but that would make the film a drama.  To make it a comedy, where do you put the beans?  That's right!  In the GUN!  Why not, what the hell, you only go round once.  In go the beans.  Curly laughs as Moe shoves the beans into the gun.  Bud Jamison reapproaches, demanding to know how the gun cleaning is going.  "Did you clean the gun?" asks Bud.  Curly replies "I wouldn't be surprised!"  What a smart-ass.  Bud goes to investigate, and finds the gun is filthy, and he orders the boys to swab it out.  Bud phrases it to set up the joke: "When I ask for service, give it to me!"  Time for the strangest looking face covered in beans ever.  I guess they had to be delicately arranged, and fastened to Bud's skin with some sort of adhesive.  "For this I hang you to the mast!"  Vernon Dent approaches.  Vernon says "Heil Hitler!" to the Stooges and they salute, but when Vernon walks away they say "Hang Hitler!"  Doing their part.  Vernon scolds Bud for having a face covered in beans.  "Zo!  Das is vot you do mit our ersatz beans!??!"  Meanwhile, Curly pretends to swab the gun, but actually ends up hitting Moe in the face with the swab handle.  Several times.  Even grinds Moe's right eye with it!  Moe strikes back.  Vernon Dent ends up with his own faceful of beans.  Vernon blames Bud for it.  Makes sense, in a way.  Even the Nazis had accountability, go figure.

ACT THREE

Scene: the big guy's quarters.  We got Stanley Blystone, chief Nazi, and we got Vernon and Bud.  The Stooges' cute dog shows up.  Vernon puts two and two together and realizes there are spies aboard the ship.  If only it would come to him what they looked like... oh well.  The general alarm is sounded, and the Stooges go into full-on panic mode.  Larry and Curly run around the same pole and into each other.  Vernon catches the Stooges and calls them out.  "You American shvine!"  Moe discovers a way to trap the Nazis.  Now, to set the plan in motion.  He pokes Vernon in the eyes at 3:46.  I only mention it because Vernon's eyes make a different sproinging sound than the usual double beep!  Weird!  I think it comes up in A Bird in the Head, too, but it's no time for details.  It's almost time for bed.  In a stroke of genius, Vernon ends up springing the trap on himself and his officers when he swipes at a Stooge with his sword and cuts the rope.  The rope net above takes its time to fall, as it gets hung up on some stuff up there.  About twenty sailors get caught in the falling net.  The Stooges start clubbing Nazi heads.  Cross-fade to a giant cloth bag making low murmuring noises.  Good thing that bag's filled with Nazis, because there's something kinda brutal about it, as the boys push the bag towards the edge of the ship.  Reminds me of a bag full of jockeys on the Simpsons that one time... I believe it was the one with Duncan the Dennis Rodman-esque racing horse.  Copyrighted, trademarked, etc.  The bag is left alone on deck for now, as the Stooges get the vibe that there are still Nazi sailors left to decommission.  A quick huddle, then off into position.  Moe calls out to the sailors, Larry's on stick, and Curly uses the giant hook that all ships have.  The first sailor emerges from the doorway.  Curly pushes, and bam!  Right in the sailor's face with the giant hook.  Block and tackle, if I may.  Larry makes a mark on the wall.  Second sailor: goes about the same, except the block and tackle hits Curly right in his hungry stomach, poor fella.  As if Curly weren't under enough stress, here comes a Nazi up behind Curly, but his protocol takes care of that.  Curly winds up with the block and tackle, which hits the sailor behind him in the head.  Two for one with one block and tackle!  Meanwhile, Moe and Larry keep 'tackling' more sailors... get it?  Never mind.  To break up the impending monotony, Larry runs afoul of a tall, fat Kraut.  A real Colonel Klink type, but a sailor.  Larry buckles quickly under this guy's weight.  Moe runs up, makes five chalk marks on the wall, and helps Larry with his flabby burden.
Next scene: a pile of bodies, but clothed, thank God.  This is a family show here.  No time for torture, though, as Moe explains: "We need one more to make the pile even!"  Whatever you say, Moe.  That part sounded dubbed in.  Back to the Captain's chambers, where he's chewing out his men.  For some reason, the Stooges can hear what these guys are saying.  Where is the chambers in relation?  Upper deck?  OH MY GOD... the Stooges have developed super hearing!  Anyway, to defeat the bad guys at the top, top level, they need a special strategy.  Something to really end this film on a high note.  A comic climax, if you will.  Time to dust off Moe's Hitler impression.  Zoom in on Larry's special briefcase that says "Minister of Propaganda: Specialist in Lies and Bunk."  Goebbels was the Fox News of his day.  After the boilerplate gibberish stops, Moe orders the failed officers to blow their brains out.  Blystone answers "But, mein Fuhrer!  Ve are Nazis!  Ve have no brains!"  No time to wait for the laugh.  Moe orders "Then vot you got, blow out!"  Now, even though it would be a fitting end to see all the Nazi upper brass blow their brains out,  it doesn't happen for some reason.  I guess that, again, we'd be venturing into the arena of drama.  This is a comedy, so the comedy path is chosen.  Moe counts to three but doesn't quite make it.  He sneezes after two, knocking his Hitler moustache off.  The real Nazis finally get it, and boy, are they pissed.  The Stooges back out of the room, then run.  The Nazis follow, but Curly slows them down a bit by hitting one of the Nazis with his giant, giant stomach.  Blystone falls on the couch, and gets a vase knocked on his head.
Next scene: the Stooges are in the fresh air again on the upper deck.  A plan is quickly hatched to get rid of those Nazis once and for all.  They remove a section of railing, grab a conveniently placed can of "floor oil" and begin to dump the "floor oil" on the walkway outside the Captain's quarters.  The plan is: the Nazis run out of the quarters, and slide on the oily walkway out into the sea.  It works.  The railing is replaced and the Stooges look triumphantly over the edge.  They get splashed with water.  Wotta day.

EPILOGUE

There's a little more celebration after that.  As for why Curly doesn't say "Wotta day" one last time is beyond me.  This isn't Seinfeld we're talking about, after all.  The Stooges didn't have time to make something out of nothing every time.  In grand Stooge style, Moe gets angry about getting splashed by Nazis with a mixture of sea water and "floor oil", so he grabs the section of railing that was removed earlier, and throws it on the Nazis.  War ended.

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-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan