#why can't they at least make an original musical once in awhile and stop doing them about shit I actually care about

[voluptuarian]

my "for you" page via explore:

there is no escape from ep*c the m*sical 😰🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

my "for you" page via dashboard:

care for another texas chainsaw massacre gifset in this trying time?

[gaykarstaagforever]

The free YouTube (and probably elsewhere) movie extravaganza continues with the 2012 Farrelly Brothers' The Three Stooges.

A movie with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes shrug, because even the reviewers who liked it only gave it a mid rating. Because the cast of Jersey Shore is in it for several minutes and they're awful, and apparently we were so sick of them by 2012 that anything including even a passing reference to Snooki had to be punished?

I'm not going to bury the lede anymore. I unironically think this movie is kind of great.

Now let me immediately qualify that:

It is way too long for the way it is paced. The Stooges' antics work better in shorts because of the high number of laffs they pack in. This movie doesn't provide quite enough down-time between the extended frantic sequences, which means a lot of genuinely funny stuff just washed over me because I still needed to recover from my previous laughing. Old Stooges used more musical numbers. This movie starts with one but that's it. Another would have helped.

The cast is great, with Sean Hayes, Will Sasso and especially Chris Diamantopoulos absolutely nailing Larry, Curly and Moe. The children who play the young Stooges are in fact brilliant, Skyler Gisondo maybe being a better Moe than Diamantopoulos. The supporting cast is also genuinely good, aside from the Jersey Shore idiots. But. No one gets much to do besides stand there and watch the Stooges hit each-other. Other than Larry David as an evil nun who keeps getting nearly murdered by the Stooges. I mean Sofia Vergara gets a live rat down her cleavage in a packed car, that then crashes into a lake, which the Stooges then explode with Curly's lobster farts. It's very good and she is very good, but there isn't quite enough of that kind of participation from the other actors.

Get you a man who can do both.

Yes there is at least one fart joke here. I find those funny if done properly, and feel the original Stooges surely would have done them if their heyday had been after Mel Brooks showed the world how funny farting can be. So this doesn't bother me. But some people apparently think fart jokes are too low-brow and that including them here sullies the memory of the noble comedy troupe who made their mark by splitting their pants and kicking each-other in the butts. So your milage may vary.

There are a fair amount of circa 2012 pop culture references. Again, this in particular doesn't bother me in most cases, because the Stooges always did those. This movie is inconsistent about how much the Stooges do or don't know about things, since sometimes they act like they've been transported from the 30s, and then Moe makes a Star Wars reference. But that's a minor nitpick. One of the bad guys calls Curly 'Butterbean.' I laughed.

I however did NOT laugh at all the godforsaken Jersey Shore garbage, i.e., those idiot morons failing to act or be funny in this movie for way too long. This stuff clearly ruined the movie for some people; I'm more forgiving than that, but Christ Jesus why did the Farrellys put all this in here? As a brief reference it would have been lame in 2012. As a major component of the third act? I realize this movie took awhile to make and in like 2009 when they rewrote the screenplay for the 16th time, Jersey Shore was the hottest thing in the still dominant Monoculture. But by 2012, 2009 pop culture felt like it was from another planet. Obviously the Farrellys couldn't know that would happen, and can't be expected to have dropped the whole subplot about Moe being on Jersey Shore so late in production. But this should never have been blown out to this substantial a thing in the first place. Why would you target Jersey Shore fans specifically with your modern Three Stooges movie? Especially once you see how bad these freaks are making actual creative content? It is such a bad, weird flex. Moe goes up to them and hits them and they say "ow!" and "stop, dude!" and it doesn't work for anyone. Minutes of this. The one positive connected to that is Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice Guy) being a Jersey Shore producer who 'discovers' the Stooges and believes they are the Next Big Thing. He is, as always, handsome and charismatic, and like everyone else who isn't Ronnie, not given either enough screen time or fun things to do.

The plot is just a retread of the old Stooges motif of them having to save an orphanage by raising money, which always was and still is just a contrivance for wacky antics. They then get roped into a murder-for-hire plot, and everything gets tied together stupidly at the heartwarming end. No harm, no foul. But this movie, pretending to be three shorts linked together, genuinely seems to forget anything plot-related for long stretches of time, only to interrupt itself suddenly with pointless revelations and double-crosses and people pointing guns at real-life cartoon men who are demonstrably immune to explosives and power tools. It makes the whole movie lurch around, and feels like maybe a result of multiple rewrites.

Other than these qualifiers, yes, I kind of loved this movie. I don't have anything else interesting to say about it, because writing about enjoying things is inherently uninteresting. The slapstick is good. The dialogue is snappy and funny. This isn't just a movie where the Stooges are in 2012 - it is an actual Stooges movie set in 2012, complete with typical joke signs and cartoon physics and no one beating the crap out of these deranged, dangerous men. It was intended as a loving tribute to the Stooges, and it nails that in a way that makes me appreciate what they did all the more. Buffonery as a genuine entertainment is a sophisticated artform, and the Farrellys understand that and how to do that and they did it here. And they were patient about casting just the right, though initially unexpected, actors, who could do this stuff exactly right. It is great to watch Hollywood professionals remind us why we pay them to do these jobs.

There is a scene where the Stooges are thrown over a fence as intentionally bad dummies, and in one continuous shot hit the ground, then the actors get up from the exact positions and run off screen. They must have used CG, but I rewatched it 8 times and I can't figure out how they did it. Do you know how rarely 'movie magic' dupes me anymore? It's amazing.

(I, however, believe I know how they got this to work.)

This was a lower-budget movie, and looks like it did...fine? I mean all things totalled it looks like it made a little money. But what a gamble it had to be, and there is no way a sequel or other entries are ever getting made. The Stooges are popular as a perfectly funny thing from a thousand years ago, appealing especially to children, and people like me who wear trucker caps with vulgar puns to the grocery store. Most people either grow out of the Stooges or don't think they're funny in the first place (my mother in particular LOATHES them). You aren't getting a modern Stooges franchise that makes a billion dollars per movie, and you shouldn't. This movie is a solid family comedy and a fun little treat for Stooge fans, that ONLY exists because the Farrelly Brothers had the sway to get it made and made properly and released in 2012. This is never happening again. This is lightning in a bottle. We got real lucky with this one.

Believe me, I would love to see at least another short with these guys, more of Larry playing his violin, them wrestling professional wrestlers, maybe Curly twists his ankle falling from a space station so a new Shemp has to fill in for a third of the movie. They are janitors at a stand-in for Stark Industries and spend 5 minutes assaulting each-other with zany superhero gadgets.

They have all gotten married somehow and each one had a daughter and now there are three teenaged GIRL Stooges who can hit each-other with crowbars and do farts. That'll piss off my favorite part of the Internet!

And no matter how bad all of those ideas turn out, they will still be better than that time The Situation was in a Three Stooges movie.

[sweetcherrypie1967]

Halloween Gala (pt 2)

"Granger?"

"Malfoy?"

The two both stared at each other speechless, and what could they say? Neither of them had so much as seen one another since the Battle of Hogwarts and that wasn't the best memory for either.

Hermione didn't even know how to react. She was on the verge of running out of there as fast as possible but at the same time she wanted to stay, he was still the same charming man she had been talking to all night after all. Truth be told, she paid attention when hearing someone mention the name Draco Malfoy or even seeing it in the Daily Prophet. Hermione knew he had changed, but how much?

Draco, on the other hand, wasn't sure whether to let her go to give her some space, in case she tried to punch him like she had in their third year, or to simply wait for her to react first. While he no longer had little to any qualms with the mysterious woman turning out to be Hermione Granger, he had absolutely no idea how she's going to take him being Draco Malfoy. After all, he had tormented her the most during his stay at Hogwarts.

He waited for some reaction, any reaction, but it didn't seem to be coming and it was starting to get awkward just holding her like this with people staring so he gently let her go. She was just looking at him with those big brown doe eyes of hers and Draco knew he had to say something. The anticipation and urge to break the deafening silence was killing him. He blurted our the first thing he could think of.

"Wow I, uh, haven't seen you since..." Draco began but then realized he'd better not go down that road, "..well a long time."

Hermione seemed to snap out of whatever trance she was in as she shook her head and fumbled out a, "yeah."

Draco looked around for anything to talk about when he remembered where they are. "You work at the Ministry?" He asked and noticed others began to stop staring and go on with the party.

"How's you know that?" Hermione asked genuinely confused, though coming back to her original self.

Draco simply gestured around them.

"Oh! Right, yes I work in the Auror Research department," she informed him.

"Really? I'm an Auror, how on Earth have we not bumped into each other sooner?" He asked.

"I have no idea! I have heard Harry and Ron say that you work with them occasionally though," Hermione said cautious about bringing them up. She wasn't sure where he stood with them anymore.

Draco smiled, to her utter shock, "the blokes have been gossiping, have they?" He said amused. As if on que, they appeared.

"Us? Gossiping? I'm offended Malfoy," Harry said.

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear," Draco said to which Harry chuckled.

"Oi, is 'Mione alright? She looks like her head might explode," Ron joked.

"I-I what? Am I missing something here?" Hermione stuttered out.

"Only a lot it seems," Draco said.

"How and when did this happen?" She said gesturing you the three of them.

"Well after the three of us here finished our Auror training, Malfoy started his. At first none of us liked it but when we had our first assignment, we all had each other's back and it all seemed to change from their," Harry explained.

So why didn't either of you tell me?" Hermione asked and her two closest friends gave her an apologetic look. She vaguely noticed that the music had started again.

"Sorry 'bout that, we just weren't sure how you'd react to it. You don't go out into the field much so we didn't think you'd understand," Ron explained.

"I also asked them not to, I wanted to talk to you myself," Draco said with a sheepish smile, "I didn't know you bloody well work so closely to us and I would've expected to run into you a lot sooner than now."

"It's better late than never, right? And by the looks of it the two of you've really hit it off tonight so it works out just fine," Harry said given both of them a knowing look to which both blushed at their very public kiss.

"Yeah.." Draco said rubbing the back of his neck, "at least I found out where I recognized you from."

All of them laughed.

"Oh, by the way, have you seen Ginny? I haven't seen her since our...talk," Harry asked a bit embarrassed at how unsuccessful it had gone.

He was trying to apologize for how they left things and before he knew it, they were arguing and she stomped away. Harry felt awful and wanted to make sure she was ok.

"I think I found her," Draco said amused as he pointed off to the other end of the dance floor where Ginny and none other than Blaise Zabini were dancing. They looked like there was no one else in the world, similar to how Draco and Hermione had felt. People were starting to leave as most of the excitement was over so it wasn't hard to see them.

Harry's face grew pale at the look on his recent ex girlfriends face, he felt a pang in his chest that she was apparently moving on so quickly but he knew that it was for the best. After all, he was the one who broke up with her and it was a few months ago. He tried not to let it show.

"I'll just..talk to her later then," Harry said not able to keep the sadness from his voice.

"It's alright, Mate, now you can ask out that girl," Draco said trying to be helpful but careful not to say her name.

"Girl?" Ron and Hermione questioned simultaneously as Harry's face turned red from embarrassment at the blond's words.

"I-uh-think I'm going to turn in, it's late and-" Harry started before being cut off.

"Harry," Hermione said gently, "you can tell us, who is she?"

Harry looked at Ron but he nodded in encouragement, "it's Luna," Harry said quietly.

"Luna Lovegood?" Hermione questioned, at his nod she smiled, "oh that's lovely! I did have a feeling there was something special between you two awhile back."

"Really?" Harry asked.

"Yes, she understood you better then well any of us could and I think she suits you, Harry," Hermione told him. Harry thanked her and the attention went to Ron.

"I mean I'm surprised but Hermione has a point, if she'll make you happy then why not? You don't need our approval," Ron told him.

"Thank you guys," Harry said then yawned, "but really, I'd better get home."

They all said their goodbyes to Harry and then Ron decided to leave also, Hermione suspected that Harry had something to do with Ron's sudden decision so the two would be alone. Hermione loved them and knew they were just trying to help, but now she was alone with him and didn't have a clue what to say.

"Since they're gone, I'd like to formally apologize to you. I've been nothing but awful to you at Hogwarts and I know an apology won't change the hurt I've cause but I really truly am sorry, Hermione. For all of it. I've worked hard to change into a better man and I'd like to think I've done a good job so far,," Draco told her as searched her face for her reaction, "I understand if you can't forgive me, I probably wouldn't forgive me either, but I've really had a wonderful time with you tonight and I hope that perhaps we could start over?"

Hermione didn't expect such a apology but she could tell he meant every word, besides, if Harry and Ron could forgive him and even be friends with him, then that's enough for her. She had thoroughly enjoyed her time with him as well, and Hermione didn't want it to end here.

"Thank you, I think that's a wonderful idea. I'll never forget what happened, it's helped to shape who I am now, but I'm willing to give you another chance and forgive you," Hermione told him with a smile.

Draco was so happy that she had forgiven him and accepted his offer to start over that, without much thinking, he had lifted her up and spun her before putting her back on the ground. After he had lifted her he worried that might not have been the best move, however she simply laughed at the action with a bright smile on her face. He set her down and dramatically held out his hand.

"Would the lovely Miss Granger care to have one last dance to end the night?" Draco asked.

Hermione giggled and took his hand, "why yes indeed."

At this they began to dance to the music, they laughed and had danced more than once before finally parting. This Halloween night would be one to remember for many, many years to come.