There's Something About Larry

The Farrelly Brothers are finally moving ahead with their Three Stooges movie.  It's been talked about in the press for years--the cast was supposed to be (but is no longer) Jim Carrey as Curly, Sean Penn as Larry and Benicio Del Toro as Moe.

As far as I can tell, the script is a fictional version of the Three Stooges story done in the style of a Three Stooges movie (or rather, three Three Stooges shorts).  However it's done, I think it's a bad idea.

We've seen movie bios of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin where the leads recreated some of their routines, and they couldn't match the original.  We've had films like Brain Donors, which is essentially a script written for the Marx Brothers without the Marx Brothers. It's actually an intriguing experiment, but can't compare to the real thing.  (I've seen a number of live productions of Marx Brothers musicals which I enjoyed, but the stage is different--we understood we were getting a facsimile that was the best available at the time and place.)

I'm not such a fan of the Stooges that I'm worried their image will be desecrated, nor am I such a fan that I'd love to see new Stooges.  But no matter how it turns out, the Stooges were original creations of specific people.  I don't get trying to do it again.