STOOGEMANIA (1986)
Article 5165 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-23-2016
Directed by Chuck Workman
Featuring Josh Mostel, Melanie Chartoff, Sid Caesar
Country: USA
What it is: Recycling gone horribly wrong

A prospective bridegroom calls off his marriage when it becomes apparent that he suffers from an affliction called Stoogemania, in which he hallucinates Three Stooges footage and acts like an idiot.

The fantastic content of this movie is the title disease, and if you think that’s lame… well, yes, it is. Nor is it a promising premise for a movie, though I will acknowledge it as an affectionate nod to the comic team in question. The challenge with attempting a tribute of this sort is coming up with new comic business that is as inspired and funny as the Three Stooges at their best, and I’m afraid it doesn’t succeed; all too often, the movie just collapses into loud, messy undisciplined slapstick. To further underline this, a good thirty to forty percent of the movie consists of authentic Three Stooges footage (which allows you to compare the real thing with the new footage), and I suspect all of it is from the handful of shorts that fell into public domain. You can get those shorts for a song, and if you do, you have the best parts of the movie there. The rest is unnecessary and a waste of time. And, for the record, movie, it’s “nyuk nyuk nyuk”, not “nuk nuk nuk”.