As far as the scene in the office, Big Chief is on to something with Jules White's ham fisted direction of the boys reacting with women. Moe is WAY over the top here. Compare this to the Ed Bernds directed old footage when he's smitten by Christine. While decidedly not subtle, Moe's acting is a bit more tolerable there, in my opinion. Hey, ham is in the eye of the beholder. How many slices does one need? A shame too, because Connie Cezon is good in a bad scene. A shame she only got a couple of good roles late in the game, as she had talent.
Just watch any Jules White directed non-Stooge short, and you'll find all the same flaws that Big Chief has pointed out before.
Now that I'm well-rested and watching this short... man is Gene Roth just awful in any film produced after 1950 (produced, not released) as his eastern-European impersonation comes out more like a Scottish accent. It's obvious that Jules needs filler as he does something he hadn't done before, and that's do an entire scene to give a Stooge routine (the flaming booze) to a non-Stooge character.
We get a full shot of Palma's clearly not-Shemp face and get to hear his clearly not-Shemp voice. You'd think there was somewhere they could have lifted Shemp's voice like they did in last week's short, but maybe Jules just didn't want to impose that kind of impossible task on some poor soul.
How far we've come from the 1940s, where the Stooges would actually make a serious effort to impress a lady.
The scenes in Prof. Snead's house and the boys making the rocket fuel are some of the funniest in all the Shemp... oh, wait... right...
Then we get another Palma-eeb... which isn't a Shemp-eeb... why didn't Shemp ever arrive from behind that door ever again? Oh, right...
Ugh!