Bubble Trouble

Larry, Moe, and Shemp have been running their drug store for the last decade. Landlord Amos Flint comes in to evict them. He berates his elderly wife Serena Flint for being old. Shemp has an idea. If the guys could come up for a formula for youth, they could become rich and famous. They are able to turn Serena into her young beautiful self.

This is a re-edit of All Gummed Up (1947) with new footage. I'm not sure what exactly was changed. People have done side-by-side comparison. I'm just going to judge this by itself and it's good. The story flow is good. I love Christine McIntyre. I love all the bubbles. I kind of want Amos to turn into a baby. They don't need to bring out the ape suit every time. I do like some of the closing action like hammering out Moe's head.

Even though I haven't seen this stooge short in about 2 years, it's a pretty short even though we don't get to see the new footage until the last 4 or 5 minutes of the short and that's when it becomes a classic (I never cared for All Gummed Up and I think that short was Shemp's weakest of the 1940's).

In the original Emil Sitka shrank after trying to drink the fountain of youth but in this short, he becomes a gorilla and grabs Moe and starts banging his head on the floor and his head becomes a squashed pancake and Moe and Larry suggest that the gorilla needs a mate and they get Shemp to try it and Shemp shoves it inside Moe's mouth and he does a chimp impersonation.

Not of one of the better remakes from the 1953-56 period but the gorilla scene makes it a classic, 2.25 out of 5 stars.

Opinions seem to range all over the map with this one--from those who say its better than "All Gummed Up," to those who find it to be one of the more putrid Shemp rehashes. Count me as the latter, as I find it very dodgy--to say the least--that this is better than the original.

Considering that most of what we see is All Gummed Up. Of course, you can count on Jules White to sprinkle in the occasional new insert shot that doesn't advance the plot--or improve anything--I just suppose Jules does it to fulfill some quota for new footage, so he could sell these tired recycles as new films.

Anyway, most of that quota comes at the very end, when the new plot twist is that Emil's character turns into an ape after eating the formula. How lame and unfunny this new twist is....

1953 marked the beginning of the decline of stooge shorts, mainly due to cost cutting measures taken by director/producer Jules White, who started taking footage from stooge shorts made in the late 1940s and editing them with some new footage & then selling them off to theaters as "new" 3 stooges films.

Good work if you can get it, I suppose, not to mention a good way to rip off the theater owners back then who thought they were getting new stooge films. But back in the days long before VCRs and DVD players were the fashion, people going to the movies back then probably didn't feel like they were getting ripped off.

As for this short, how anyone can say it's better than the original is beyond me. More than about 90% of this short is "All Gummed Up" and the little bit of new footage at the end is nothing to write home about. If I had to be brutally honest, the whole ape angle is downright lame. And I'm a big Shemp fan, but honestly the remakes were for the most part, forgettable & this is definitely one of the worst, right along with "Hot Ice" or "Flagpole Jitters".

3 out of 10.

A couple of veteran Stooge players are in Bubble Trouble. Emil Sitka and Christine McIntyre play their landlords.

Sitka wants to throw Moe, Larry and Shemp from the pharmacy they operate on his premises. He's one mean old skinflint. Then McIntyre comes complaining that the old skinflint is throwing her out after her giving him the best years of her life.

The boys go to work and after many tries invent some ugly looking goop that's a fountain of youth. Years come off her life.after McIntyre inhales a few slugs.

But itworks somewhat differently for men.

All I'll say is McIntyre got the best of the bargain.