This movie, if it ever gets made, will suck all sorts of ass no matter who plays the Stooges and no matter who makes the film. Why? Because Benicio Del Toro cannot play Moe, Sean Penn cannot play Larry and Jim Carrey cannot play Curly. The only people who can play those roles and pull them off are Moe Howard as Moe, Larry Fine as Larry and Jerome Howard as Curly (and if Shemp were to have been a part of it, Samuel Howard as Shemp). The actors made and morphed themselves with the characters to the point where to most people they became indistinguishable. Nobody else can play those parts, and the last time I checked all of those guys are long dead.
The Three Stooges were product of their time and left us with an enormous canon of films. Let's keep them in their time, look at the films they made in their time! There is no good reason to try to bring them into the present with actors that cannot play those parts. [] The Three Stooges time has come and gone (in fact their time went while they were still working) and all six of them that were at one time members of the group have died. Let's be content with the work they left behind.
Agreed, and 100% correct.
There's a reason that this Farrelly/C3 project was announced in 2001, and gone nowhere since. Warner Bros. dropped the option... followed by independent producers who couldn't get financing... and now MGM/UA grasping for straws. Regardless, the concept is an ill-advised insult to the memory of The Three Stooges. The script the Farrelly brothers developed, as described in
the April 2004 New Yorker confirms that.
Let's put all earlier casting comments back into perspective, for the "several-eth" time...
Carrey, Del Toro, Penn, et. al.,
not a single one of them was signed & committed to actually perform in this ill-advised project. That was all
PR smoke-and-mirrors put out there once MGM/UA optioned the Farrelly project... the actors mentioned received compensation in exchange for their names to be used in MGM/UA promotions. Specifically, to leverage the value of their boxoffice names to promote MGM/UA's backlog of projects, and hopefully attract other studios and financial backers to pull MGM/UA out of its financial quagmire. And every step of the way, the DeRita heirs who manage C3 happily jumped on the MGM bandwagon to promote their website's wares.
MGM/UA got its [temporary] reprieve the past week, with debt holders taking equity in the company, based on the future market value(s) of "James Bond" and "The Hobbit."
Wherever this Farrelly/C3 project winds up, MGM/UA or elsewhere, it will be wrong... as mentioned numerous times, only Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard, Jerome Howard, and yes, Joe Besser & Joe DeRita are
The Three Stooges.
A conversation I had with a C3 exec in 2005 talked about this movie that will "make the Stooges relevant for the 21st century," and "make money." Very reminiscent of a 1998 argument I had with a C3 exec on a different topic, but just as relevant, who told me that "I can't be expected to understand these things, because I'm just a fan."
I look forward to a new topic of discussion... "
The Three Stooges Film Project by Farrellys & C3... D.O.A."
