I seem to be alone in finding this short mediocre. I suppose that one's estimate of it depends on what one thinks of the style of humor of the early
Men in Black, to which the Stooges return in this short as if the Los Arms hospital were a time machine. To me that style of humor, with its whimsical contrivances (traveling around the hospital in various conveyances, giving people traffic tickets, taking the role of radio host on the loudspeaker system, and so on), is weak and tiresome and drags down the overall quality of this short.
There is some good head-conking action at Los Arms, such as when Larry's contribution to the radio act of an unmotivated but completely innocent "Ubbubbubboo, ubbubbubboo" earns him a punitive blow to the forehead from Moe, and again at the bedside of the Rip Van Winkle wannabe (another bizarre Curly double), when Moe gives Curly a "See that?" with one fist and then bops him with the other one. But the Stooges seem to me to do better before they get to the hospital, first in their bizarre domestic arrangement of three couples apparently sharing a one-room and one-bed apartment, then when they sally forth to encounter Dr. Bright and try to hawk his product in the streets. I relish this bit of quasi-musical dialogue, even though the form was used more than once (was it in
Uncivil Warriors, or am I thinking of the later
Goofs and Saddles?):
Dr. Bright: This, gentlemen, is Brighto.
Stooges: Yes?
Dr. Bright: The savior of a nation!
Stooges: Yes, yes?
Dr. Bright: The scientific marvel of the age!
Stooges: No!
Dr. Bright: Yes!
This leads to an outbreak of spontaneous Stooge rhyme (recalling a similar bit in
False Alarms):
Moe: Brighto! Brighto! Makes old bodies new!
Larry: We'll sell a million bottles!
Curly: Woo woo-woo-woo-woo, woo-woo!
Vernon Dent is in top form as the man, later revealed to be hospital director Harry Arms, who finds the boys taking the paint off his car in their attempt to polish it with Brighto. The action by which he gets hit in the face with pies is classic. As he shouts for the police, we see, in a wide shot, the Stooges breaking away from his car at the exact moment that a delivery man, a kind of
diabolus ex machina, appears in their path drawing a tray from the back of a truck labeled "Mother's Pies." The setup could hardly be more obvious if the sign on the truck had said, "Pies for Vernon Dent's Face." The boys collide with the delivery man, sending his wares falling on the back of Dent's car. In the real world, this would be the end of the matter. But this is the Stooge universe, in which pies, once they get on camera, must hit someone in the face, and in which nothing attracts them more strongly than the face of a large, angry, blustering Stooge nemesis. So, of course, as Dent continues to shout for the police, pies or pieces of pie fall around him until at last a big one, following a trajectory that would be impossible in the real world, catches him squarely in the puss. Comic necessity triumphs over nature.
![[pie]](https://threestooges.net/forums/Smileys/default/throwingapie.gif "Throw Pie")
