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SALT LAKE CITY -- Have you felt like there's been a lack of nyuk-nyuk jokes, sight gags and pratfalls in movies lately? If so you're in luck, because the Farrelly brothers have rolled out the trailer for their modern-day take on the classic "Three Stooges." If you thought the nyuk-nyuk and sight gags were already at an appropriate level, I apologize, and we all pray for your sanity.
The new trailer for "The Three Stooges" is two minutes packed full of eye poking, face slapping, hammer-to-the-head moments. While the Farrelly brothers have remained true to the source material, many feel the classic comedy does not translate into modern times.
"There's good reason to wonder just how successful the Farrellys' iteration of ‘The Three Stooge's is going to be at the box office," wrote Screen Rant's Sandy Schaefer. "A lot of moviegoers might simply find the film's brand of physical comedy and old-fashioned humor to be (for lack of a better description) too outdated for their tastes."
"Credit where it's due to the actors faithfully reviving the Stooges as we remember them, but it's impossible to imagine them actually working in the context of a 2012 released feature film," wrote Katey Rich with Cinema Blend.
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However, it's not the possibly outdated jokes or over-the-top sight gags that make me fear this movie may be a major pratfall itself, it's that fact that the Farrellys' thought it'd be a good idea to add Snooki and the rest of Jersey Shore to the cast. I admit I could be terribly wrong, but when you're counting on J-Woww and The Situation to keep a movie afloat, you're most likely already taking on a great deal of water.
But, despite the questionable casting choices, Entertainment Weekly's Kate Ward thinks the film will be just fine.
"The franchise seems to be in good hands — who, in modern filmmaking, does slapstick quite as well as the Farrellys?" asked Ward.
The new Stooges film has a huge cast including names like Jon Hamm, Sofia Vergara, Larry David and Jane Lynch. Even home-town boy Kirby Heyborne can be seen in the trailer. From what I understand he plays Sofia Vergara's husband. Doesn't sound like too bad of a gig.
The Farrellys' say they plan on making the new Stooges a family-friendly film, despite the images in the trailer of a lobster being shoved down Larry's pants and the shot of a bikini-clad nun getting out of a pool.
"The Stooges, by the way, are just naturally and organically PG," Peter Farrelly said in an interview with MTV News. "That's what it is. We wouldn't want it to be what it isn't. It's like 'Napoleon Dynamite,' as funny as that was, that was a PG movie, not PG-13. It's just natural, and this is what the Stooges is."
We can say what we will about the trailer whether we love it or hate it, but we'll have to wait until April to find out if the decade's old gags will land with audiences or if they'll get a swift poke to the eye.
E-mail: jclyde@ksl.com
