The Three Stooges Had Their Own

Dan Barry: Disparage the Three Stooges if you must, you cineaste. Dismiss their films with a weary wave of your smoldering Gauloise. But give them this: Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp inhabited a world entirely their own, a surreal place where cream pies could fly, and hammer blows to the head never drew blood.

The Stooges maintained their safely violent universe for several decades, beginning with movie-house comedy shorts in the 1930s and continuing deep into the television era. But their Stoogeland gradually slipped away, like some sunken, knucklehead Atlantis — that is, until the Farrelly brothers resurrected it this week with their homage of a film, "The Three Stooges."

But what about all the menacing mugs who sat down on sizzling waffle irons? And all the sassy girlfriends who pulled at Larry's hair as though it were taffy? And all the others who inhabited this black-and-white madhouse, delivering and receiving blow after blow, going home, and coming back in the morning to do it again? Sometimes their best lines went no further than: "Hey you! Get back here!" Or, "Why, I oughta."