The Three Stooges

Not even the presence of Sofia Vergara, the woman who has launched a generation of boys into puberty, could save this horrible, misguided, poorly conceived mess called The Three Stooges.

It's not n'yuck n'yuck n'yuck. It's YUCK YUCK YUCK!

Larry (Sean Hayes), Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Curly (Will Sasso) are three 35-year old best friends forever who were dropped off at the orphanage as babies and never adopted. Now, they work as the maintenance staff, but to call them bumbling is a compliment.

Of course, trouble is on the horizon as the orphanage is in debt to the amount of $830,000, and the whole place will be closed down and the children sent off to foster homes unless they find a way to pay it all by the end of the month. Guess what! That's when Larry, Moe and Curly set off into the world to raise the money.

Can these three stooges raise $830,000 in one month?

Can you make it through the entire movie without throwing your popcorn at the screen?

While watching The Three Stooges, you practically can envision the greedy studio execs rubbing their hands together in anticipation of counting all of the money they hope to swindle out of true stooges fans , but if the dedicated weren't willing to embrace Curly Joe, what makes anyone think they will embrace these three dudes?

Ultimately, you aren't watching THE Three Stooges. You are watching three guys do an impression of THE Three Stooges, and that doesn't have the magic and the authenticity of the original. It's like Nickelback doing a cover of a Beatles song. It just isn't the same.

The Farrelly Brothers (Bobby and Peter), who directed the movie and wrote it with Mike Cerrone, haven't given us some sort of biographical look at The Three Stooges, which might have been interesting. Instead, they have taken the idea of the stooges and dropped them into modern day, which isn't entertaining as all they do is mimic the stooges, hope the slapstick material will make you giggle and subject the audience to one of the most agonizing potty humor sequences I have ever witnessed. When I saw the movie with people who won free tickets, the guy in front of me fell asleep! That's never a good sign.

They couldn't even come up with an original story idea. Trying to save the orphanage where they were raised is the plot of The Blues Brothers, a movie that is two trillion times funnier and memorable. Like in The Blues Brothers, The Farrelly Brothers even try to bring in a series of stars to liven up the proceedings, but Jane Lynch, Larry David, Kate Upton, Jennifer Hudson and Dwight Howard must have been paid very well to subject themselves to being in this one, because I can't imagine any of them begging to be in the movie after reading the script (maybe they weren't given scripts ahead of time?).

Even Craig Bierko, best known for being the guy who passed on starring in Friends as Chandler Bing, probably went back to his trailer to build a time machine so he could return to the 90's, take that role and never ever have to be in The Three Stooges.

If you want to see The Three Stooges in action, don't go see these imposters. Get the originals on DVD.

The only joy I got out of this movie was watching Moe beat up the kids from The Jersey Shore.

The Three Stooges is rated PG for slapstick action violence, some rude and suggestive humor including language.