“Soitainly an Embarrassment”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

The Three Stoges: The Movie is how the publicist wants references to be made about this movie, which is so bad, it is lucky to have any references made to it at all.

However, speaking of references, what first comes to mind is a parody from the Bible: “When I was a child, I enjoyed the antics of The Three Stooges, but when I became a man I put away childish things and don’t find them funny anymore.”

The second reference that comes to mind is that the story is straight out of the 1980 The Blues Brothers: raising money to save the orphanage in which the title characters grew up.

This story starts off with three babies being tossed out onto the steps of the orphanage, and they look just like the identifiable mugs that we have come to recognize by their haircuts, Moe with his bowl-cut style, Curly with his shaved pate, and Larry, who is half bald and half wild and curly haired.

Incidentally, Moe is still the self-appointed leader of the group, but the grownup Larry is played by Sean Hayes, who is more well known than the actors playing Moe and Curly, and so Hayes is billed as the star of the movie.

Then we see the Stooges 10 years later, and they are doing the same shtick that we enjoyed watching them do when we were children. A young couple choose Moe for adoption, but it doesn’t end well, and they return Moe and choose another young boy instead.

Then it is 25 years later, the boys are all grown up now, and everybody learns that due to lack of money, the orphanage will be shut down at the end of the month.

The orphanage needs $830,000 to be saved, and Moe says, “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

All they know how to do is handyman work, however, and of course they aren’t even very good at that. But the Stooges are pure of heart and dim of wit.

And what follows is a falling out among the Stooges, Sofia Vergara as a rich woman who hires them for some dirty work, and a wasted and tasteless introduction of the reality stars from “The Jersey Shore.”

The Three Stooges: The Movie is not much of a movie and soitainly an embarrassment.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”