The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)

Some things I liked some I did not.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Don't you dare take this serious. Our Boys are up to the usual nonsense that can lead to nothing but mayhem. They have been doing it the same for about 35 years by this time. Sure they are in their 60's, except the 'kid', Curly Joe. Nothing they do makes sense and any normal person would walk away from the Flying Submarine. They do some genuine funny bits, some older than The Stooges themselves and many around from their Vaudeville days. But they hit the mark and are very funny. Relax and Enjoy this idiotic mindless comedy. "I don't think, I know it is funny". Get it? Did you catch that joke?

It's pointless to review the Stooges movies by comparing them to the shorts. These are two very different artforms. The Stooges shorts are easy to like, the movies need a bit of willing suspension of adulthood.I first saw Three Stooges in Orbit as a kid, and that's the way I'd suggest seeing it now. There are so many reasons I really love this film, but most of them won't make sense to a dried up adult.Even in this computer-graphic age, there's so much here that a kid just has to enjoy. The flying submarine, for starters. What a concept - it both hearkens back to Jules Verne, and anticipates Terry Gilliam by several decades. The goofy aliens. As a kid I was scared of them, amused by them, and just transfixed by the alien-ness of them. The wacky rotoscope animation process the Stooges are working on. Could that really have worked?The Stooges movies are very different from the shorts, in that they're actually about storytelling. But there's plenty of Stooge-mania along the way. The whole thing with the A-bomb in a dust storm is side-splitting. ("Visibility, zero!") The antics with a hole in the cellar wall, a pipe and a raygun. And others. But they're in support of a story.I was always aware that these movie-length Stooges were very different from the ones I saw in the shorts. For one thing, Curly was gone. For another, they were a lot older. But they were still geniuses at what they did: creating a magical world of laughter and imagination.To me, these creaky old low-budget films are cinema at its finest. They created a magical world for me when I was a kid. Decades later, they still play in my head.

Having previously reviewed Soup to Nuts which had Ted Healy with Moe, Larry, and Shemp, Violent is the Word for Curly with Moe, Larry, and Curly, Swing Parade of 1946 with the same Stooge members, and Hold That Lion! with Moe, Larry, Shemp, and Curly-with hair!-in a cameo, I'm now going to review The Three Stooges in Orbit with Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. This was the most lame thing I've seen them involved with before their subsequent cartoon series put them even lower in quality. I mean, the script doesn't really go anywhere, the romantic leads are soooo bland, and the only visual gag that I found even remotely funny was when the helicopter blades conveniently took some pies from a table and hit all those superior Army officers in their faces! (That, and a turn-the-table-top-over-to-reveal-something-different-under-it bit.) Emil Sitka, who's to the Stooges what James Finlayson is to Laurel & Hardy, seems almost a little embarrassed to have to do both comic scenes with the boys and then have to play it straight as the father of a grown woman. I did like seeing Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe made up entirely in white paint doing the Twist, then having them animated and seeing Moe reading the English subtitles of the Martians was another amusing bit. And some of the beginning credit animation was cool. And hearing the Hamms beer jingle ("From the land of sky blue waters...") and the Greyhound bus slogan ("Leave the driving to us") was pretty amusing. Otherwise, everything-especially the direction of the usually reliable Ed Bernds-was just tired and worn out. So on that note, I'd only recommend The Three Stooges in Orbit if you're a completist of the boys. P.S. Besides Bernds, two of the players-Edson Stroll who plays Captain Tom Andrews and George N. Neise who plays Ogg and an airline pilot-were also born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.

This is one of the weaker things the later Stooges did, and you can mark that down as coming from a lifetime fan of all their two-reel shorts (be they with Curly, Shemp or Joe) as well as their feature films with Curly Joe DeRita. This movie just flat out ain't very funny. Having Moe, Larry and Curly Joe tangle with old professor Emil Sitka and cool-looking Frankensteinian martians (well, they look cool to those of us who grew up loving cheesy monster movies) should have helped make for a sure fire bullseye. Instead, this nonsense is all over the place, hopping from one unfunny bit of business to the next, trying to fill in the running time with all sorts of unrelated junk (including a meaningless relationship for the professor's daughter). This makes their Joe Besser shorts like OUTER SPACE JITTERS and SPACE SHIP SAPPY look positively first-rate. ** out of ****