What's the Matador?

Larry, Curly, and Moe come up with a new matador act. Their agency receives a call from Mexico City looking for a matador. The boys travel south but their suitcase gets switched. They track down their suitcase despite a series of misunderstandings.

Siesta is stupid and hilarious. Before that, I start with Curly getting hit by the secretary. It occurs to me that he needs to get hit more by his female co-stars. Their frustration with him would be a great running gag. This is basically divided into three acts which is very interesting. The final bullfighting act has Curly doing his thing. It ends with a great Curly bit and this is great.

In April 1942's "What's the Matador?" a play on the phrase 'What's the matter,' the Stooges play vaudeville entertainers whose schtick is dressing Curly as a bullfighter with Moe and Larry inside a bull's outfit. They squeeze a gig in Mexico, but encounter a jealous husband who catches his wife Delores (Suzanne Kaaren) flirting with the three travelers. The laughs pile on when the hubby arranges a real bull to enter the ring while the Stooges are performing their act, with Curly receiving the butt end of the prank. The film parlays on the popularity of Tyron Power's 1941 hit "Blood and Sand" about the bullfighting arena with Rita Hayworth.

"What's the Matador?" features a Mexican giving a longest set of directions captured on film delivered in Spanish, totally confusing the Stooges. In essence he tells them to take a series of left and right turns before he finishes with, "There you will find a river. Do me a favor: jump into the river and drown yourself!" This movie also includes a "comedy of manners" scenario commonly found in Restoration English theatre which typically takes place in a bedroom where hidden lovers of wives slink from the clutches of outraged husbands. Here, in the couple's bedroom where the husband is napping Delores hides the Stooges, who want to exchange the luggage Jose had accidentally grabbed at the bus station. Pandemonium ensues when he awakens, ending when Jose can only gawk at the three while each emerges separately from his hiding place and leaves.

"What's the Matador?" offers a rare time when Moe refers the trio as 'The Three Stooges' while sending a telegram. Also film reviewer Stuart Galbraith notices Curly's physical downfall, stating, "one can see the earliest signs of Curly's pre-stroke personality change. It's very subtle, and while he's still quite funny, one can see little changes in his screen persona, and about here he begins to age dramatically, with lines suddenly etched deep in his face."

It's those kind of puns in the subject head above that make this Stooges-in-Mexico short humorous at times, but overall it is not one of their more memorable movies although it could have been given the Mexican locale.

Mostly it's just the normal Moe sticking his figures in Curly's eyes type slapstick. The skit in which the boys have no clue what the Mexican is saying because he speaks Spanish is lame and goes on too long.

Suzanne Kaaren as "Dolores Sanchez," was pretty; kind of a poor man's Rita Hayworth with her hairstyle, body and looks. She was offered a role as a Ziegfield girl at the tender age of 15, and then later had her legs insured for a million bucks.....so the Rita Hayworth comparison wasn't exaggerated, although Rita was.......well, Rita.

I was hoping the bullfight scenes at the end of this Stooges short would be hilarious but they were only so-so, and should have been funnier. Overall, this was okay - I did laugh out loud a few times - but not one of the more laugh-producing shorts the boys made over the years.

One of my favorite Three Stooges films, with my favorite of all their villains. The bit where Delores hides the Stooges from her husband is classic, especially considering that neither she nor the Stooges are actually doing anything wrong. Jose's reaction when he discovers them in his bedroom still crack me up after many viewings. The climactic bullfight is also brilliant, and even though you can see "between the lines" how the filmmaker pulled off the effects without injuring the cast, that's part of the joke and the fun as far as I'm concerned.

This is one of the funniest of all the Stooge classics. No wonder various elements of this short have been used in many Stooge shorts that came out in later years. I especially loved the scenes with the Stooges and Jose. Jose is the ultimate jealous husband. He is such a paranoid individual that he would probably kill a man just for looking at his wife. But the scene that really makes this film is, of course, the bullfighting scene, especially Curly's reaction that the bull is real and not Moe and Larry in a bull costume. That scene alone makes this a classic.