The Three Stooges - Stop! Look! and Laugh!

Rating:
Summary: Good Film!!
Review: Pretty funny movie. Everything was good except the "Cinderella" clip. This film contains a collection of clips from previous 3 stooges shorts. When this movie comes out, get it. It's funny, especially the scenes with Paul Winchell and his dummy.

Rating:
Summary: Could've been better.
Review: STOP, LOOK, AND LAUGH is an interesting compilation movie. This has some of the Stooges best shorts, A PLUMBING WE WILL GO, MICRO-PHONIES, HOW HIGH IS UP?, HALF-WITS HOLIDAY, VIOLENT IS THE WORD FOR CURLY, SOCK A BYE BABY, and HIGHER THAN A KITE. This is an interesting movie. There's some good editing on some of the films, like when Paul Winchell gets his car fixed, we're directly back to HIGHER THAN A KITE. But the clips of the Stooges are cut down way too much and there's background music that doesn't even fit and is serious music. An okay movie, but would have been better without a Cinderella sequence, the music, and some better editing.

Rating:
Summary: Great Short! The movie on the other hand...
Review: The short, A Bird in the head is hilarious... Then there is the movie, Stop look and laugh. The only thing to look forward to about this movie was the stooge clips. It was not etertaining and actually got on my nerves quite a few times. If Colubia - Tristar plan on releasing one short with a movie, I will for sure be stopping my collection. Return to the shorts only, you want to release the movies.. do it on seperate DVD's. Otherwise you've lost a customer.. that's all I have to say about that.

Rating:
Summary: Great Short! The movie on the other hand...
Review: The short, A Bird in the head is hilarious... Then there is the movie, Stop look and laugh. The only thing to look forward to about this movie was the stooge clips. It was not etertaining and actually got on my nerves quite a few times. If Colubia - Tristar plan on releasing one short with a movie, I will for sure be stopping my collection. Return to the shorts only, you want to release the movies.. do it on seperate DVD's. Otherwise you've lost a customer.. that's all I have to say about that.

Rating:
Summary: It's Winchell Mahoney Time, It's Time For Fun
Review: The significant thing about this DVD is that it's one of the rare times Paul Winchell filmed his ventriloquist act with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. Winchell was the best ventriloquist of his time in my book, and I'm thrilled that a DVD is available with his cool puppets. And The Stooges are great, as usual.

Rating:
Summary: Add one star if you're looking for a kiddie movie
Review: This compilation with "The Original Three Stooges" (that's how they're billed) was released for the Saturday-matinee crowd in 1960. The Stooges clips are familiar (the gas station, the garage, the bullfight, the pie fight, etc.) but sometimes brief (a classic sequence with Moe, Larry, and Curly pantomiming to an operatic record is unfortunately cut to the bone). Ventriloquist Paul Winchell is very funny, and The Marquis Chimps appear in a clever Cinderella sketch. STOP! LOOK! AND LAUGH! is best for little kids; serious fans will prefer their Stooges "straight," in the complete, unedited episodes.

Rating:
Summary: Welcome, but...
Review: This film is a hybrid of new non-Stooges material and classic scenes. It's worth having, but Columbia continues to treat Stooges fans rather cavalierly.

With the success of the Stooges shorts on TV, it seemed like a good bet to take clips from the Curly shorts to make a new "feature" (Allied Artists did likewise with the Little Rascals, making a 'new feature' called LITTLE RASCALS FOLLIES), and STOP! LOOK! AND LAUGH! was the result. Popular kids show host, ventriloquist Paul Winchell, ties the clips together with his sidekicks, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, and the climax features the Marquis Chimps, well remembered from their Ed Sullivan Show stints, performing Cinderella(!!!). Not exactly your typical Stooges fare, and it's jarring to hear new music dubbed over well-known Stooges scenes.

As mentioned, it's worth having (hopefully, Columbia will provide a better transfer than some of their recent Stooges shorts collections). It's nice of them to include a bonus Stooges short, too, and A BIRD IN THE HEAD is a pretty good one. Still, this and the weak THE OUTLAWS IS COMING are the only Stooges features Columbia has yet released on DVD, leaving the superior THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES, HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL and THE THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT in the vault.

It would also be very nice of Columbia to feature bonus shorts from their catalog, perhaps as easter eggs, on the discs, such as Vera Vague, Charley Chase, or Andy Clyde.

Rating:
Summary: stop look and laugh
Review: THIS ISN'T GOING TO BE NOTHING BUT CLIPS FROM
SOME OF THEIR WORK.THE ONLY SHORT WILL BE A
BIRD IN THE HEAD WHICH IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES.
BUT JUST 1 SHORT DOESN'T JUSTIFY 4 OR 5 STARS.I
WOULD GIVE IT ONLY 1 IF THE SHORT WASN'T INCLUDED.
I HOPE COLUMBIA STARTS PUTTING 6 OR MORE SHORTS
ON DVD FROM THE STOOGES AGAIN INSTEAD OF JUST
1 SHORT.

Rating:
Summary: Winchell & the Stooges: Who could ask for more?
Review: When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s my two favorite ventriloquists were Jimmy Nelson (with dummy dog Farfel and boy dummy Danny O'Day, who starred in the famous Nestles Qwick commercials) and Paul Winchell (and his wonderful dummy Jerry Mahoney). And then there were the zany Three Stooges. This film was released at the height of the Three Stooges revival, when the Columbia short subjects department had closed down and the release of the films to television created a huge hunger for more "product." What better way to wet the appetites of youngsters than to release a compilation -- and have it hosted by Paul Winchell, whose dummies with their moving hands (very clever puppetry) and zippy personalities created huge laughs. And what better way to bring it ALL together than to have the Winchell segments directed by one of the Stooge's directors. The result: a truly funny, slapstick buffet of the best of Paul Winchell at his height and some (often ham-handed) edited Stooges shorts. Winchell's bits hold up quite well. Modern day kid audiences have heard Winchell (up until recently) as the voice of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons (it's the voice he used for Knucklehead, his dorky dummy). Some of the best Stooges bits are here, but they are edited heavily, with backgound music inserted at times -- and the music does not help the Stooges's comedy. Forget about this being a nostalgia tape. If you want to see what a toprate ventriloquist is like, at the peak of his creative and comedic powers, and see a respectible overview of the Three Stooges this is a great tape to see. ONE NOTE: Winchell's segments really do mesh quite well with the Stooges segments due to his own timing and his director's skills. (PS: I have a conflict of interest on this one. I never met Paul Winchell but I am a fulltime ventriloquist -- and I am biased towards ventriloquism and dummies...which is probably also why I follow politics).