Have Rocket -- Will Travel

source: Have Rocket -- Will Travel

*Spoiler/plot- 1959, Have Rocket, will Travel, The Three Stooges travel to Venus with new rocket fuel formula and encounter giant spiders, talking unicorn and baddie master robot and so forth. *Special Stars- Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Joe De Rita as the boys. Don Lamond a soon-to-be son in law joins them in many film duties. *Theme- The boys have the 'yuks' on us. *Based on- The Three Stooges, Columbia Studios film shorts. *Trivia/location/goofs- It's online. The Threee Stooges first full length feature film. Clearly shot in the NW SF Valley area near Chatsworth, Calif. *Emotion- This film is satisfactory, cubed. But, it is a gimmick-riddled film of little note to their long 50+ year funny entertainment careers. It's a forced gimmick exploitation of the Stooge genre. This film's title is a 'spin' off the popular TV series with Richard Boone, "Have gun, will Travel". And in real life, Don Lamond helps the Stooges get into the TV craze.

This wasn't up to the standards of the shorts shown on TV. Moe just just wasn't himself - he seemed kind of bewildered delivering his lines - not his self-assured meaness. Larry was just fine. Joe DeRita didn't cut it at Curly Joe but he sure tried. Speaking of short I didn't realize how short they were. And it is a shame how they were shorted on earnings never being paid more than $20,000 a year each. If their movies ever came to my hometown I never saw them - it was the first time I had seen DeRita as a stooge. I wouldn't have liked the musical/singing numbers. Not very stooge like. The whole film seemed lacking and a far cry from the superior Abbott & Costello Go to Mars (even though it was Venus) made six years earlier. As Svengoolie stated "the Abbott and Costello vision of Venus was the preferred one."

The planet Venus is populated by energy…that and a lonely robot. Make energy, a lonely robot and a tarantula which shoots fire out of its fangs. Oh, don't forget a squeaky voiced unicorn whom the Three Stooges rescue when they discover it caught with its horn caught in a rock. How the boys get to Venus is pretty forgettable, but unfortunately, it takes them forever to get there. They are good hearted, however, determined to help kind-hearted scientist Anna-Lisa invent a fuel which will get the rocket tipped upside down outside their shack upside right and prevent her boss (Jerome Cowan) from firing her. In the process, they pop popcorn, discover that sugar makes a great fuel (especially when Moe drinks the fuel by mistake, thinking it's coffee), and turn the plumbing business back fifty years in an effort to find the key to the spaceship which fell down a drain. Kids of the late 1950's might have found this funny, but this wouldn't cure the A.D.D. of today's youth who would find this instantly idiotic. Robert Colbert, the hero of "The Time Tunnel" and the original patriarch of "The Young and the Restless", is pretty much wasted as a fellow scientist in love with the pretty Anna-Lisa, basically standing back observing the goings-on of the foolish Three Stooges whose comedy even 30 years after their first appearances together is violent and dated, especially when presented to a young audience. An attempt to bring slapstick in with three robot versions of the boys coming down to earth after harassing the shrunken ones on Venus just falls flat. Then, there's a fight started at a lavish social gathering to honor the returned stooges, crowned heroes, in the film's ridiculous finale. Joe DeRita is a poor substitute for the late Curly, and the title song is weak as well. Stick with the shorts. At least they are over within 20 minutes.

Granted, "Have Rocket, Will Travel" isn't the Stooges' best work--it's not even their best feature with Joe DeRita (I'd vote for either "Around the World in a Daze" or "The Outlaws Is Coming"). Nevertheless, it's pleasant and has some good moments. Strangely, it's just about the only Stooge film that's not on DVD as of December 2010. I have the VHS release, which looks fine, so decent source material exists and I wouldn't think there would be a rights issue. Maybe Columbia-TriStar is withholding it so that we'll buy it in a box set of the complete Stooges Columbia features (and buy all of the other features, which are on DVD, all over again!). Certainly, now that they've done a spectacular job with all of the shorts in chronological multi- disc volumes, a box set of the other Columbia Stooges films would be a logical release. Anyway, I hope this makes it to DVD soon.

"Have Rocket--Will Travel" is my favorite Three Stooges feature film. After years and years of making two-reelers at Columbia, the boys were finally given their shot in features, even if Moe and Larry were well past middle age. With a fantastically witty music score, this picture is, for the most part, quite entertaining and lively. I must, however, agree with one particular Stooge author who wrote that the only time the picture drags is when the Stooges land on Venus, particularly when they meet the talking electrical energy device, which shrinks them and locks them in a cage. Fortunately, as this same author pointed out, the pace picks up rapidly again once the Stooges leave Venus and return to Earth. Here are some of the highlights from this excellent comedy (don't read any further until after you watch the film). While on board the rocket ship, Larry accidentally sticks his finger in an electrical socket, shocking not only himself but also Moe and Curly-Joe as they try to grab hold of him. While searching for a key that slipped down a drain, Curly-Joe performs a variation of Curly's classic maze-of-pipes bit from the short "A Plumbing We Will Go" (1940). Evil robot Stooges chase the real Stooges in a corridor with six doors. The Stooges apply shovels and picks to dig their way into the rocket in order to rescue a monkey, and while they're inside, they just cannot seem to prevent the rocket from falling over a cliff. And finally, the dance sequence at the society party is wonderful not only for Larry's losing his shoe and jostling with dancing couples to retrieve it but also for Curly-Joe's spring-on-the-trousers gag (reminiscent of the classic Stooge short "Hoi Polloi" [1935]). "Have Rocket--Will Travel" was a huge moneymaker for Columbia Pictures, and no wonder. It succeeds in entertaining and providing a number of good laughs. Supporting actor Jerome Cowan, playing the head of the space center and a marvelous foil for the janitorial Stooges, manages to get a few laughs as well. It is also a nice touch to hear the boys sing, not only during the opening credits but also during the Stooges' stroll with the talking unicorn while on Venus.

Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959) ** (out of 4) Mildly amusing comedy has The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, Curley-Joe) accidentally setting off in a rocket and going to outer space. Once there they land on an unknown planet where they encounter a talking unicorn and an electronic creature. This was the Stooges big comeback after having been written off and pretty much overlooked. The trio had their shorts showing up on television where they gained new fans in the form of kids so this film was quickly released with the kiddies in mind. There's really no reason to compare this set of Stooges to the early Columbia shorts because it's obvious this film was made for a different group of people. Most of the comedy in terms of violence is watered down and a lot of the jokes are more slapstick than anything else. This film was certainly better than I thought it would be but it's still not quite what I'd consider a good film. There are a fair number of laughs scattered throughout with one of the best coming during a long sequence where the boys are trying to create fuel to make the rocket go. Larry ends up drinking the toxic fumes, mistaking it for coffee and the pay off here is quite nice. Moe and Larry were certainly getting up their in years and couldn't really do any of the more physical stuff but they're still pretty good here. Joe DeRita certainly isn't Curly but he manages to get a few smiles. A lot of comedians, including Abbott and Costello, were testing their jokes in space and I don't think too many of them ever really worked. The jokes here are certainly aimed at children and while a few of them work there's just not enough to carry the 76-minute running time.

Avid fans of the Three Stooges will likely be disappointed by this feature length film. There's no Curly and no Shemp, but on the plus side, there's no Joe Besser either. (Joe DeRita is much better suited to this role than Besser was) By the time this film was made, the Stooges' act was well past its prime and most of their gags had a "seen it before" quality to them. There are some entertaining moments for those die hard stooges fans as the Moe, Larry and Curly Joe are sent into space and encounter Alien life forms. However, there are few laughs and a better bet would be to watch one of the many brilliant Stooges' shorts from their glory years. It's a shame that the trio didn't begin doing featured films earlier when the team was still intact and the jokes and sight gags fresh. This is recommended only for those completely obsessed with the Stooges.

This movie is the equivalent of a satisfying trip to your favorite fast food restaurant. Let's face it, if you're in the mood for a quarter pounder with cheese than the most delicious sirloin steak isn't going to satisfy you --- only that greaseburger will do. By the same token if you're looking for some low-brow Stooge fun then Ernst Lubitsch at his peak ain't gonna do it for you but this film will. Sure, it's not even the Stooges at their best, their glory days were almost twenty years in the past, but they still had some of the old zip and all the old shtick is trotted out like it was brand new and mixed with enough fifties sci-fi clichés to provide a satisfying junk meal. In fact a straight sci-fi movie like QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE could have used some of this movie's imagination and energy. I particularly liked the giant fire spewing tarantula, an effect pulled off quite well I might add, at least as well as Universal's "classic" TARANTULA. And I have to admit I find the title song kind of catchy. So sue me.

How well I remember the long lines at the box office for Have Rocket, Will Travel. Harry Cohn may have died a year before, but his successors at Columbia Pictures realized they had a gold mine on their hands when those old Three Stooges shorts were gaining a new generation of fans of which your's truly was one of them at the age of 11. The lines were comparable to those for a new Harry Potter film, I kid you not. The Three Stooges had their half hour comedy show with Officer Joe Bolton on WPIX Channel 11 in New York and other similar venues throughout the country. So with only two Stooges still on this mortal coil (Joe Besser was never really a Stooge), the search was on to find a third one to fit in with Moe Howard and Larry Fine. Character actor Curly Joe DeRita was hired to pinch hit for the late Curly Howard. Movie audiences if they had noticed would have also seen him in 1959 as a treacherous hangman in the Gregory Peck western, The Bravados, but here he simply steps in as a kinder, gentler, and somewhat less zany version of Curly. Looking back, Have Rocket, Will Travel borrows quite liberally from the Abbott&Costello film, Abbott&Costello Go To Mars. The same premise happens, three nincompoops instead of two accidentally get launched into space and head for Venus where they establish interplanetary relations. The film does not have the Stooge zaniness, there could only be on Curly. But Joe DeRita is not the only problem. Moe and Larry had aged and the physical comedy they did in their younger days, just isn't present any more. For the kids back then it was satisfying enough, but Have Rocket, Will Travel just doesn't measure up to the Three Stooges in their prime.