I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Charming and brutal

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Camera tricks and quick edits are today's substitute for the great physical comedians of the past to whom you could just say, roll camera and they would do the rest. The pacing alone of this gem is aided by our knowledge of who these characters are and have been since the early thirties. When Shemp takes over the job, the loss of Curley as the third wheel doesn't feel so bad. All that bravado, mugging and dancing he does through this is priceless and original, only a Howard would know how to fit in. The sometimes hidden Larry shows off on piano and even without Moe, Shemp and Larry in a room are funny. Moe is always the funniest to me, getting tortured for his own hubris.

So says Moe about his brother, but as it turns out many women find Shemp eminently resistible until they learn he's to inherit half a million dollars. Then he's got more women on his hands than he knows what to do with. Proving that for half a million dollars women will even marry into The Three Stooges.Brideless Groom casts Shemp as music teacher with Larry as an accompanist and Moe essentially as a kibitzer. Moe gets a telegram for Shemp which says he can inherit half a million dollars if he's married by 6:00 pm that day, it was the last wish of his uncle.He phones a whole bunch of girlfriends who reject his proposal of matrimony, the only one who will consider it is this Amazonian type female who is a voice student of his. Their relationship is something like Fortunio Bonanova trying to teach Dorothy Comingore to sing. But I'm sure she pays well.Of course by that time all the women who've rejected him have heard about his inheritance thanks to the brilliance of Moe putting it in the society column. The last few minutes of half a dozen females fighting over Shemp is priceless if a bit unreal.

OK, the other reviewers have pretty much covered the main points of this great little gem, i.e. the story started out in life as material for Buster Keaton's silent classic "7 Chances". Comedy, or acting in any genre for that much, is merely interpreting a scene and lines that someone else has written and performed before, if it's not a totally original creation. Here we have The Stooges essentially doing material that was written and performed by someone else and yet for a low budget, short time span of a film, they're handling things just fine. Regardless of what the credits say on their films, real "stooge-philes" know that they had a lot of input on lines and direction. They took their work as seriously as a surgeon does a vital operation. Words spoken by Emil Sitka himself during a documentary about the boys. Here, what appears to be their usual anarchy over something so simple as getting married, is actually organized chaos. Every line is perfectly timed with a related physical action. How many comedians are around today that can claim such mastery? Most obviously the Seinfeld crew but none others that I've seen in the last 35 years of watching TV. The critics will always "pooh pooh" The Stooges or Laurel & Hardy and others but then again...who ever remembers the critic's names or what they said? Simply watch, laugh and enjoy!

This was my first taste of the long-running trio and, quite frankly, I was left wondering why they remain so popular if this was typical of their output. Then I watched Disorder in the Court, made eleven years earlier, and I understood. This was the Three Stooges long past their prime, rehashing old gags that were performed better by their original owners, and missing the zany touch of Curly, who had suffered a stroke earlier the same year. I really can't understand the high rating and praise for the film on this site, because there isn't much to laugh at here. Only the final scenes, which look like they've been dreamed up by some Eric Stanton devotee, come even close to raising a smile. Avoid this one unless you're an undemanding die-hard fan.