Stone Age Romeos (1955) User Reviews

Another recycled short

[ftgplus4 · 5/10 · 10 November 2006]

It's hard to rate this short on its own terms because about half of it consists of footage from another short (as was common practice with the later Stooge shorts) -- namely "I'm A Monkey's Uncle" (1948). When this happens it's usually called a "remake", but this is more of a "recycle".

The first half of the short consists of new footage, which is actually quite good in its own right. The rest, other than an epilogue with more new footage, is just an edit of "Uncle". The old stuff worked better in its original context. Framed by this particular new stuff, it ends up being kind of dumb.

Worth seeing for the new stuff, or if you just don't want to miss anything Stooge-related.

Intrepid or decrepit?

[slymusic · 26 January 2011]

"Stone Age Romeos", directed by Jules White, is in my opinion an excellent Three Stooges short, one of the few in which the boys portray swindlers. A museum curator (played by the great Emil Sitka) promises to pay the shutterbug Stooges an enormous wad of money for creating documentary evidence that cavemen are still in existence. This Stooge film is a remake, with a lot of stock footage, of an earlier Stooge film entitled "I'm a Monkey's Uncle" (1948). It appears that a majority of Stooge fans pay little or no regard to the cheap remakes the boys were churning out in the mid-1950s, but I believe "Stone Age Romeos" is a wonderful exception, even better than the original.

My favorite scenes: The curator whips out a pistol and shoots the Stooges in their butts (new footage). Larry tickles Shemp as the latter churns butter (stock footage). The Stooges apply a swinging tree branch to hurl rocks, lava, and other deadly objects at their rivals (stock footage). Larry and Shemp shoot arrows at a duck, but they miss the duck and hit Moe (stock footage). When Moe catches a "dogfish", Larry remarks, "I hope it ain't got fleas," after which he receives an eye poke (stock footage).

One of the chief strengths of "Stone Age Romeos" is the multitude of witty dialogue and great slapstick throughout, and if there is one actor in this film who really stands out, I believe it would be Larry Fine. Edward Bernds, who wrote and directed a fair number of excellent Three Stooges films, once remarked that the Stooges weren't worth anything without Larry, and he was correct. When Larry was given the opportunity, he could be hilarious!

Again I am struggling to see the motivation why this was made

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 17 September 2018]

"Stone Age Romeos" is an American live action short film from 1955, so this one is already over 60 years old and if you read the names White and Adler, then maybe you know already we have another Three Stooges short here. Even if this is far from their latest works, it is of course from the days when Shemp had taken over already and this was quite a while after Curly's death and sadly also not too far away from Dhemp's own untimely death. Most of what you see in here is taken from another Three Stooges short film from the late 1940s and this is also the reason why I wonder why this was even made. I mean it's fine if they lack creativity and ideas for new projects after so much and everything they made before and nobody would balme them, but why recycle these old films with a handful new scenes. Anyway, story-wise the highlight here is clearly the in-between, not the frame when they are in the now, but the very long middle part that shows us the Stooges as cavemen and how they meet cavewomen, but also how they meet antagonists and there is a lot fighting going on. The comedy here is typical Stooges material. This time, you rarely see one of the trio (usually Moe) exacting some kind of violence on the others, sometimes unintentionally, but it's basically all mishaps, like the ink scene. Best moment was maybe when the Stooges meet the females and for Shemp it's tables turned as she is the dominant part in their relationship and carries him away while for the other two it is the other (traditional) way around. Okay, that is all I think, overall neither a tedious nor an entertaining watch. As usual with the Stooges, it's all about individual comedic scenes and moments and the negative consequence is that these 16 minutes fall really flat when it comes to the story-telling department. Watch something else instead.