"I Can Hardly Wait" is an American black-and-white short film from the days of World War 2, so this one actually has its 75th anniversary this year. Director White is a 4-time Oscar nominee and the script is by Clyde Bruckman, who is mostly known for all his collaborations with Stoneface Buster Keaton. It runs for slightly under 19 minutes, which makes it a bit longer than your average Three Stooges short film from back in the day. Curly is still on board here and the subject is toothache and as a consequence dentists also play a major role here, so this one may be especially effective and/or interesting to those who fear the annual dentist visit. The tooth must out for Curly, but until it does a lot of pain and suffering is included. Not just for Curly, but for all Stooges, especially Moe. Here we have an early occasion of dream sequence use in film. I am generally not the biggest Stooges fan, but this one here was fine I guess. Sure here and there we get the usual pointless unfunny violence, but there are also many entertaining moments. It's a pretty fast and pretty creative work I'd say and Curly really is at his best here in terms of physical acting. He was genuinely funny sometimes and so was the entire film. Maybe it was not as good as it was on first watch, but still quite funny on several occasions and this one with the unusual title for the trio is among my big favorites from them, a definite contender for number one and for best short film of the year 1943. If you want to take a dive into the Stooges gigantic body of work, then this one may be a good choice to start with. I highly recommend checking it out. Strangely this one, unlike many other of their far inferior works, was never remade. Anyway, go see it. You certainly should.
Review of I Can Hardly Wait
