“I ain’t never ate a brown reddish.”
After yesterday’s exercise in unsavory cinematic foulness, I needed to rebound with something to get the bad taste out of my mouth. So I figured it was as good a time as any to check in on the Three Stooges.
When I was a little kid, I LOVED the Stooges. I remember having a VHS tape with four or five of their shorts recorded off of TBS, and watching it over and over… I still practically have those films memorized. I thought they were basically the funniest guys ever. So really, it’s high time that I give them some attention here on One Movie Each Day.
Today I decided to watch Sing a Song of Six Pants. The 1947 short is available just about everywhere due to its having inadvertently released to the public domain in the 1960s, but I hadn’t seen it before today. It sticks to the tried and true formula, and like all good formulas, it works.
In this installment the Stooges, Larry, Moe and Shemp are the proprietors of a tailor shop. In an amazing coincidence, on the very day they receive notice that they’re facing eviction over a late rent payment, they hear a news bulletin that a notorious bank robber is on the loose and that the authorities have offered a reward for his capture. In a further stunning coincidence said criminal finds his way into their shop. Hilarity ensues.
The film is full of the Stooges trademark slapstick humor and silly puns. It’s a short comedy that knows exactly what it wants to be, and succeeds at being just that. It’s stupid comedy, but it’s brilliant. There were times I rolled my eyes, there were times I chuckled, and there were times I laughed out loud. At the end of the film’s seventeen minutes I was happier than I was going in. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for. Sing a Song of Six Pants was exactly the kind of film I needed to see today. It’s well worth seeing.
[Sing a Song of Six Pants (1947) - Director: Jules White - Not Rated]
