Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

fung0 It's pointless to review the Stooges movies by comparing them to the shorts. These are two very different artforms. The Stooges shorts are easy to like, the movies need a bit of willing suspension of adulthood.I first saw Three Stooges in Orbit as a kid, and that's the way I'd suggest seeing it now. There are so many reasons I really love this film, but most of them won't make sense to a dried up adult.Even in this computer-graphic age, there's so much here that a kid just has to enjoy. The flying submarine, for starters. What a concept - it both hearkens back to Jules Verne, and anticipates Terry Gilliam by several decades. The goofy aliens. As a kid I was scared of them, amused by them, and just transfixed by the alien-ness of them. The wacky rotoscope animation process the Stooges are working on. Could that really have worked?The Stooges movies are very different from the shorts, in that they're actually about storytelling. But there's plenty of Stooge-mania along the way. The whole thing with the A-bomb in a dust storm is side-splitting. ("Visibility, zero!") The antics with a hole in the cellar wall, a pipe and a raygun. And others. But they're in support of a story.I was always aware that these movie-length Stooges were very different from the ones I saw in the shorts. For one thing, Curly was gone. For another, they were a lot older. But they were still geniuses at what they did: creating a magical world of laughter and imagination.To me, these creaky old low-budget films are cinema at its finest. They created a magical world for me when I was a kid. Decades later, they still play in my head.

tavm Having previously reviewed Soup to Nuts which had Ted Healy with Moe, Larry, and Shemp, Violent is the Word for Curly with Moe, Larry, and Curly, Swing Parade of 1946 with the same Stooge members, and Hold That Lion! with Moe, Larry, Shemp, and Curly-with hair!-in a cameo, I'm now going to review The Three Stooges in Orbit with Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. This was the most lame thing I've seen them involved with before their subsequent cartoon series put them even lower in quality. I mean, the script doesn't really go anywhere, the romantic leads are soooo bland, and the only visual gag that I found even remotely funny was when the helicopter blades conveniently took some pies from a table and hit all those superior Army officers in their faces! (That, and a turn-the-table-top-over-to-reveal-something-different-under-it bit.) Emil Sitka, who's to the Stooges what James Finlayson is to Laurel & Hardy, seems almost a little embarrassed to have to do both comic scenes with the boys and then have to play it straight as the father of a grown woman. I did like seeing Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe made up entirely in white paint doing the Twist, then having them animated and seeing Moe reading the English subtitles of the Martians was another amusing bit. And some of the beginning credit animation was cool. And hearing the Hamms beer jingle ("From the land of sky blue waters...") and the Greyhound bus slogan ("Leave the driving to us") was pretty amusing. Otherwise, everything-especially the direction of the usually reliable Ed Bernds-was just tired and worn out. So on that note, I'd only recommend The Three Stooges in Orbit if you're a completist of the boys. P.S. Besides Bernds, two of the players-Edson Stroll who plays Captain Tom Andrews and George N. Neise who plays Ogg and an airline pilot-were also born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.

slymusic (Please note: "The Three Stooges in Orbit" has always been one of my favorite Stooge films since I was a teenager in the early 1990s, and it still is today. However, at the time I wrote the commentary below, I briefly began to have mixed feelings about the film. Anyhow, here is my commentary.)I have read that "The Three Stooges in Orbit," directed by the usually great Edward Bernds, is not one of the better feature films that the Stooges made. Indeed, the story is not well put-together; it might have just been an excuse to incorporate stock footage from the Stooges' unsuccessful TV pilot "The Three Stooges Scrapbook" into the first twenty or so minutes of "Orbit." Adding to the flimsiness of sixties sci-fi production values are the appearances of the Martians; they are basically human bodies with hideously over-sized heads and embarrassingly unintelligible language. And the music score of Paul Dunlap, while somewhat interesting, may not be enough to enhance the picture. However, "The Three Stooges in Orbit" is still entertaining to watch, and the boys are greatly supported by their long-time pal Emil Sitka, who has a substantial role as the eccentric Prof. Danforth.Here are some of my favorite highlights from "Orbit" (do not read on if you have not yet seen the picture). The model of the professor's tank/helicopter/submarine buzzes Curly-Joe while he takes a shower; he ends up dousing Moe, Larry, and the professor when they arrive to help him. The Stooges resemble Martians in their white costumes and makeup when the professor films them applying the latest dance craze for their faltering cartoon show. When Martians Ogg (George N. Neise) and Zogg (Rayford Barnes) hijack the professor's vehicle and traverse the sky while the Stooges hold on for dear life, Curly-Joe gets his head stuck in the ray gun that the Martians installed. While the Stooges help the professor fine-tune the vehicle before showing it to the Air Force brass, Larry accidentally squirts oil onto Curly-Joe's face; Joe, in turn, staggers onto the vehicle's controls, causing Moe to fearfully spin around on a helicopter blade. At a climactic moment, Moe figures out what the Martians are up to by reading the English subtitles off the screen; the boys then accidentally knock each other out in trying to knock out Ogg and Zogg. The Stooges make a total mess out of their demonstration of Prof. Danforth's vehicle for the Air Force. And finally, Curly-Joe proves he doesn't know how to work a hammer and chisel; Larry tries to help him, but he proves himself not much smarter.So "The Three Stooges in Orbit" may not be the best feature film that the boys tackled. But I would like to believe that every film has its good points, and this film delivers at least a few laughs for the Stooge fan.

rocketXpert First of all, the Stooges spend almost no time in orbit at all in this film. Maybe I was thinking of "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" when I thought this would be more space oriented. All that wouldn't matter if this had been any good.The movie starts out with a somewhat interesting narration by a Peter Graves-like voice, giving us a history of the centuries of speculations of what shape Martian life might take. It turns out the "startling answer" to this question is that Martians look like guys in crude rubber masks that are a cross between Frankenstein's monster and the people from the "Twilight Zone" episode "Eye of the Beholder." In fact, one of them is a guy in a rubber mask. Why did his superiors go to the trouble of giving him cosmetic surgery to look human if he's going to go and disguise himself as a Martian? Mars is in a lot of trouble anyway, if their entire invasion consists of two soldiers creeping around an old man's house.Somebody made a good point that at least the aliens speak another language instead of English, like so many sci-fi movies, but those scenes drag, as if the Martians are waiting for the viewers to catch up to the subtitles. This actually leads to one of the few humorous moments, where Moe does read the subtitles, but since this comes about fifteen minutes before the end of the movie, it doesn't help much.Maybe the haunted house elements made me start thinking this was a lot like a literal, full-length, live action version of an old Hannah Barbera cartoon. The humor is so lame and predictable. How many times did somebody say some variation on, "I'm not dumb, you know," and then they go and do something dumb? Oh, look, somebody has just carefully laid out a bunch of pies while the Stooges are wreaking havoc in front of some distinguished army brass. I wonder what's going to happen next?There's also a pointless romance between the professor's daughter and an army captain. They spend most of their time staring dreamily at each other. Later, you know the captain is at the door by the way the romantic music starts playing before she can even answer it, which is one of the unintentionally funny moments.It's probably obvious I'm not a Three Stooges fan. I saw this as the second part of a double feature, and I stuck around to see if my opinion of them improved at all. I should've walked out like nearly the entire audience did. I did like that made for TV bio-pic where Paul Ben-Victor played Moe, however. I just apparently can't stand their shtick.