G.I. Wanna Home (1946) User Reviews

Reflection of post WWII housing shortage

[Eightythreeyearoldguy · 8/10 · 17 April 2008]

One of the good things about the Stooges shorts was the topicality and this one does reflect the postwar era and its challenges.

The boys return from the service to find their girl friends dispossessed and living quarters impossible to find. The best part of the film shows their making do setting up housekeeping in someone's back yard. Top gags include the egg scene and of course the parrot within the goose. That particular scene reminded me of an Abbott and Costello scene with Costello trying to eat a catfish unknowing of a cat under the table which squawked every time he stuck a fork into the fish.

Be that as it may, this is a good followup to the wartime shorts.

more with the ending

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 18 February 2021]

Larry, Curly, and Moe have been discharged from the military and are returning home to marry their girlfriends. They find the girls crying after being thrown out onto the streets. The guys can't find a place to rent and end up laying out their furniture in an empty lot.

I like a lot of this. I like the imaginary home in the yard. The boys are fine but it's not their best effort. More can be done with the girls. I like crossing the threshold but the girls disappear after stepping into the other room. They just vanish. I was also expecting something funnier about the house. The triple bunkbeds are fun but what about the other room? It could be funnier if the other room opens up to something wacky. The ending is lacking in finale. There is another two minutes to finish off the premise.

Only in Stoogedom

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 23 April 2014]

The post World War II housing shortage is the subject of this 3 Stooges short. Long before Abbott and Costello tried to solve the problem in Buck Privates Come Home, the 3 Stooges beat Bud and Lou with G.I. Wanna Home.

Probably Moe, Larry, and Curly were as useful to the war effort as Bud and Lou and unlike them they have brides, Tessie, Bessie, and Jessie awaiting their arrival. But only in Stoogedom would these three expect to move in together with their wives, presumably to raise little stooges. In the end the girls do the only sane thing possible, walk out on them.

The boys do have a funny bit with a squirrel who takes the place of stuffing in a roast goose they prepared. And only the 3 Stooges would think of having adjoining triple bunk beds for themselves and their brides in their honeymoon post war home.

One of their funniest.

Poor Curly

[slymusic · 21 May 2007]

"G.I. Wanna Home" is one of the very last Three Stooges shorts to star Curly Howard as the third Stooge. Curly was very ill at this time, apparently having suffered a mild stroke that gravely affected his energy and youthfulness. Director Jules White did the very best he could under the circumstances, shifting a good portion of the comic material to Moe and Larry, with satisfactory results. In this short, the boys return home from serving their country to find their sweethearts dispossessed. The rest of the short consists of the boys doing the very best they can to locate and furnish a suitable domicile for themselves and their future wives.

Here are some of the more memorable scenes from "G.I. Wanna Home." After the girls have been dispossessed, they and the Stooges cram all their belongings (furniture and everything) into one ridiculous-looking vehicle, towed by none other than Curly himself. At the Stooges' new "home" (a vacant lot), Curly uses a vacuum cleaner on the lawn, but he leaves it unattended for too long, and the bag explodes. When Curly's upper bunk bed crashes downward onto Moe and Larry, Curly claims he didn't get hurt, but Moe proves otherwise! AND the Stooges' pet parrot winds up inside a stuffed goose (a gag that has appeared in a few other Stooge shorts such as "Three Dark Horses" [1952] and "Crash Goes the Hash" [1944]).

It's quite easy for the Stooge fan to notice just how badly Curly was struggling during the filming of his last dozen or so Stooge shorts with Moe and Larry, "G.I. Wanna Home" notwithstanding. It was only a question of time when he would suffer the stroke that ultimately rendered him no longer able to perform. After ninety-seven shorts for Columbia ("G.I. Wanna Home" was number ninety-four), Curly's career as one of the Three Stooges was history.

Good Three Stooges short!

[Movie Nuttball · 10/10 · 26 September 2004]

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

I think this Three Stooges short is a very good one and really is an underrated one in My opinion. Judy Malcolm, Ethelreda Leopold, and Doris Houck are in it. Also there are appearances by Symona Boniface and Al Thompson. The Stooges are very good in this one. Curly is very different and very funny as well. There are many hilarious things in this one. If you are a Three Stooges fan watch this one!

Sad Film with a Dissipated Curly Howard

[mrb1980 · 3/10 · 20 August 2013]

The final Three Stooges shorts with Curly Howard were often excruciating to watch, since the once-energetic and vital Curly is a dissipated shadow of his former self. Director Edward Bernds said later that Curly was so sick during this period that he thought Curly might die during filming. Directors usually reacted to Curly's condition by placing an uncomfortable Larry in Curly's usual character, or by padding the shorts with unnecessary material.

When you're aware of all that, it seems that "G.I. Wanna Home" is a fairly typical and substandard latter-day Curly short. The boys play G.I.s who are home from the war and want to marry their sweethearts, but a critical housing shortage forces them to live in someone's back yard. The Stooges do their usual things—Moe gets a face full of eggs, the boys are repeatedly splattered by mud from passing cars, Curly has misadventures with a vacuum cleaner, the Stooges have unpleasant encounters with several landlords, Curly pulls the Stooges' car with a horse collar, and Moe sets a hot roasting pan on Larry's back. The Stooges finally marry their sweethearts, leading to an all-too-familiar sequence involving a triple bunk bed.

Curly shows some life while fixing dinner, but otherwise he has no energy, since his speech and reactions have slowed way down compared to the early days. Moe and Larry seem a little lost without Curly's manic energy, so the entire film sort of meanders aimlessly from beginning to end with only scattered laughs. It's not quite as sad a film as "Rhythm and Weep" or "Three Loan Wolves", but it's not very good, either.

Curly, the greatest black and white celebrity

[spiderguy_07 · 21 March 2006]

I love this stooge short. The only sad thing about this one is Curly's condition was declining at the time, and Moe had to help him with most of his lines. When Curly was filming "Half Wit's Holiday" (his 97th short), he suffered a stroke and wasn't even seen in the last part of the film. This is something that really made me mad. It would've been better if they wouldn't have replaced "Hoi Polloi" with "Half Wit's Holiday" and just made "Three Little Pirates" his last stooge short. It must have been hard for Moe and Larry to film the last part of "Half Wit's Holiday", especially for Moe, because for those of you that don't know, Curly is Moe's younger brother. *Hats off to Jerome Lester Horwitz (Curly)*

Gee I don't wanna see this

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 3 December 2017]

Okay, it was not that bad admittedly, but first things first: G.I. Wanna Home" is an American 15-minute comedy short film from 1946, so this one had its 70th anniversary last year. It is from one year after the end of WWII and if you read the names White and Adler here, then maybe you guess correctly that here we got another Three Stooges short film and this is in fact one of the final films from the long-running series starring Curly before his health forced him out. Actually, you can already see that he was certainly not in great shape and I am not referring to the weight here. Anyway, as for the film: The title already tells that this is actually somewhat referring to the end of the war and soldiers coming home with the usual play on words by the Stooges. Actually, this is among the better Stooges films' titles I've come across. But this alone doesn't make it a good watch. In here the Stooges are facing housing problem, something that is still oh so common seven decades later when it comes to looking for apartments etc. Back to the film: Moe is a bit more of a bully in here and more slap happy than usual. Bot story-wise, it was never really on a level where I would recommend the watch, neither in terms of the plot nor in terms of the comedy nor in terms of the romance. Then again, if you like the trio more than I do, then perhaps you will have a solid time watching here. I personally give it a thumbs-down though. Not recommended.

Weak Stooges effort

[frankfob · 1 January 2012]

This is one of Curly's last Stooges shorts, and it's more than evident by watching this that he was very, very ill. He had lost a lot of weight, his reflexes were slow, his speech was halting and he didn't have the spark and mischievousness that his fans had come to expect. He was in such poor health that it was actually discomforting to watch Moe and Larry slap him, kick him, and do all the things to him that were funny in his previous shorts, but due to his ill health it looked uncomfortably like they were beating up a helpless old man. The plot, about three ex-GIs coming home from World War II and discovering that they don't have a place to live and can't find anyplace that will take them, is somewhat topical--there actually was a severe housing shortage immediately following WW II--but the short itself is stiff and stilted, mainly due, I think, to Curly's slowed-down reactions due to his health. The "old" Curly comes to life for a minute or two when he is preparing "dinner" for the three of them in the backyard they're living in, but otherwise this short is the beginning of the end of Curly's career, and it's sad to watch.