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By Maggie Scott

When  I asked my brother-in-law—a devoted fan of Moe, Curly and Larry—if he was going to see the new Bobby and Peter Farrelly film, The Three Stooges, he said, “Why? They aren’t in it.”  With all due respect to my sister’s fantastic husband: He’s a numbskull.

Chris Diamantopoulos (Moe), Will Sasso (Curly) and Sean Hayes (Larry), as well as the fantastic kids who play the Stooges as kids, couldn’t be closer to the spitting-in-your-eye image of the Stooges than if they’d been their clones.

From head to toe, they’ve got every zany gesture and facial expression; every whiny, mean voice; every clobber; every slap; every eye-poke and every nose and ear pull down to perfection.  And, while the story is not “War and Peace,” the script by the Farrellys and Mike Cerrone has a tight, well-constructed feel of a classic Stooges “short;” where the action dictates the slapstick, not the other way around.

It’s not mindless idiocy, but Stooges idiocy; and there’s a big difference. The Stooges and their antics tap into everyone’s primal experiences surviving childhood dealing with limited powers of mind and body against what could be a cruel and capricious world.  A world that often included annoying siblings for whom, when push-came-to-shove—literally—we felt an ironclad loyalty.

We also recognize an ultimate innocence about the Stooges and their never-give-up attitude, no matter how many self-inflicted or Moe-inflicted hard knocks they suffer.  In contrast to what looks (to parents and pacifists) like cruelty on the part of Moe, the writers provide a few characters in the film who are truly mean; and make sure they suffer the most extreme (and hilarious) indignities as a consequence.

There are other ways in which the Farrellys have succeeded spectacularly in triggering our Pavlovian response of belly laughs to what is transpiring on screen.  They’ve crammed the action with plenty of classic Stooges insults (verbal and physical), puns and word-manglings.  Curly: “I’m a victim of soycumstance!”   Moe: “Chowderhead!   Buy a toupee with some brains in it!”  Larry: “I’ll save him.  I know the Heineken maneuver!”

Last, but not least, there are the classic Stooges predicaments; one of which—Moe and Curly dueling (dressed as female nurses) with whizzing newborn babies—is guaranteed to make you wet your drawers with laughter.  Then there’s the dolphin with a peanut in its blow hole that Larry nearly squeezes to death; a rat in a lady’s cleavage; a well-timed toot in a submerged car’s air pocket; a lion getting slapped silly (and mad); a piled-on and pummeled Monsignor (Brian Doyle-Murray) mistaken by the Stooges for a mugger; a stick of dynamite courtesy of the Stooges in a patient’s full-body cast.

From the Stooges’ “ahwhoowhooowhoowhooowhooowhoo” to Curly’s sideways twirl on the ground, the Farrellys have missed nothing to bring the Stooges back to glorious low-brow life.  What’s the story you ask?  Abandoned at an orphanage as a holy terror “holy trinity” to the beleaguered and battered nuns who care for them for 35 years, Moe, Curly and Larry try to raise $830,000 in 30 days to save the orphanage from sale and the kids from foster homes.

Their quest leads to a murder-for-hire scheme hatched by Lydia (Sofia Vergara) and her lover, Mac (Craig Bierko) and a part (Dyna-Moe) for Moe on a reality TV show.  Larry David as Sister Mary Mengele and Jane Lynch as the Mother Superior are side-splitting Stooges side-kicks and the Farrellys poke fun, literally, at the cast of “The Jersey Shore.”

Don’t be a nitwit chump.  If you have to hitch a ride on a car bumper to get there (a classic Stooges form of transportation), get your “earthworm” body to the theatre for a sure-fire nyuk nyuk time!  A Twentieth Century Fox release rated PG for sledgehammer blows to the head, nose-hair pulling and other all-in-good-fun violence.