"Fuelin' Around" is an American 17-minute live action short film from 1949, so two more years and this one has its 70th anniversary. Director is Edward Bernds and writer is Elwood Ullman and these two received an Oscar nomination a couple years later for another collaboration. But in this one here they are not the stars. The stars are of course the Three Stooges in their 116th short film apparently. Cast includes people like McIntyre and Sitka who played in several other Stooges short films as well. As usual, it runs for 17 minutes approximately and Shemp had already replaced Curly by 1949. He even got first credit, which showed that they wanted him to become the star of the gang like Curly was. But even if I like Shemp and I am not a huge Curly fan like many others, it wasn't working out here. Slapstick is a bit on the lackluster side and nothing in this little film is on par with the interesting story about the Stooges being abducted and forced to produce a miraculous fuel which they obviously cannot as they were mistaken for scientists of course, but are just simple handymen. So yeah, acting-wise and comedy-wise this wasn't a revelation sadly. Nowhere neat the trio's best material and a bit shocking on the negative side they even remade this one some time later. I give it a thumbs-down and even if I may be a bit biased as I have never been a really huge Stooges fan, I think this is only worth seeing for the very biggest fans of the legendary trio.
Review of Fuelin' Around
