Kind of hard to compare, considering that the Stooges’ weaker shorts barely even qualify as shorts, since the studio relied so much on stock footage. To be honest, I’m surprised that the studio stayed open for as long as it did. They may as well have done what MGM eventually did with the Tom and Jerry shorts: just reissue older shorts and save even more money.
The thing with Keaton at Educational is that in the weakest shorts, he himself does not seem that invested in what’s going on. At MGM and Columbia, this was understandable since the studios clearly didn’t know what to do with him. However, judging by shorts like ONE RUN ELMER and GRAND SLAM OPERA, it’s clear that Keaton had more opportunity to do better than he did at Educational. Sure, the budgets were low, but the Stooges could work well with low budgets. They only needed one room, and they still could pull off some really funny material in original shorts like TRICKY DICKS. You could blame some of the problems with Keaton’s weaker shorts on his drinking, but as we’ve established, he did get sober during this period, so a lot of it was him just not caring about the material.
That being said, I’d still say as a whole that the weaker Stooges were worse. Besser came across as super annoying in his Stooges shorts, whereas Jimmy Durante simply just didn’t fit as a partner for Keaton, and Keaton never attempted anything as bad as making films after a co-star had died and pretending that co-star was still alive.
