I Can Hardly Wait

"I Can Hardly Wait" is one of the best Three Stooges short subjects ever. Lots and lots of laughs and slapstick comedy in this one. Moe, Larry, and Curly are perfect here, making me laugh out loud like they did in many of their other films. Oh no, the stooges sleeping in another triple bunk bed? I think anybody who has ever watched The Three Stooges automatically knows what's going to happen when a triple bunk bed is featured. I don't even have to say it. I'm sure everybody knows the final result. Hilarious.

I Can Hardly Wait (1943)

**** (out of 4)

Moe, Larry and Curly are trying to split a piece of ham and an egg. Poor Curly gets left with the ham bone and after trying to eat it gets a tooth ache. The rest of this short has Moe and Larry trying to figure out a way to pull it.

I CAN HARDLY WAIT is in my opinion one of the best of the Three Stooges shorts. The film has one terrific laugh after another and some of the best gags that you're going to see in any of their movies. There are so many great moments here but there's no question that the second portion is just pure madness. The boys are trying to get ready for bed but the tooth needs to come out. This leads to a variety of violent gags where Curly has to play the victim to Moe's over-the-top ways of pulling the tooth. The gag dealing with the three story bunk bed is pure classic. Even the first portion of the film dealing with them cooking manages to get some big laughs.

This Three Stooges short begins with Moe, Larry, and Curly eating rationed food in their house. Then Curly has a toothache from something he ate with Moe trying to get that painful tooth out. I'll stop there and just say there's quite some really funny business concerning all those attempts to get Curly's tooth out whether by Moe or some of the dentists they visit. So that's a high recommendation for I Can Hardly Wait.

Another funny Stooges short where Curly suffers from a bad tooth and Moe and Larry do everything they can to extract it, to no avail. As a last resort, they drag a rattled Curly to the dentist, where he continues to resist pain. A lot of the tooth-pulling gags were redone in later Stooges shorts particularly Pardon My Clutch with Shemp. Curly's performance is spot on in this.

Moe was in a particularly ornery mood as seen in the Three Stooges' previous film, August 1943's "I Can Hardly Wait." Writer Clyde Bruckman dipped into his treasure chest of Laurel and Hardy classics and found 1928's 'Leave 'Em Laughing,' which he changed to open with the three arguing during dinner time. Curly feels he's getting slighted by handed just egg shells and the bone in a slice of ham rather than hardboiled eggs and the ham meat. Biting into the bone cracks one of Curly's molars, sending him to the dentist. A mix-up at the dentist has Moe's tooth pulled out instead of Curly's. The film's title derives from Curly's repeated lamentations about his sore tooth during the night as Moe and Larry, in a triple-stacked bunk bed, try to get some sleep.

References on WW2 permeate throughout "I Can Hardly Wait," with the three as employees of the Heed Lock Airplane Corporation, a play on one of the United States' largest defense contractors, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Also, in a Curly dream sequence, Moe tells the dentist, Dr. A. Yank (Bud Jamison), after a sleepless night listening to Curly's painful complaints about his tooth, "Listen, doc, we're defense workers. If you wanna cut down on absenteeism, yank this guy's tooth! He won't let us sleep, he's sabotaging the war effort!" This short film uses one of the most minimalist sets in the Stooges' portfolio, with just a kitchen, a bedroom, and a dentist office. This harkens back to the comedy team's live vaudeville days where the three performed on the stage with just simple props and furniture.