Review of Flat Foot Stooges

"Flat Foot Stooges" is an American 16-minute live action short film from 1938, so this one has its 80th anniversary this year. This is one of the really rare occasions where the title already includes the word "Stooges" for one of the Three Stooges short films. Like all their others, this one is in black-and-white and it is another effort directed by pretty famous silent film actor Charley Chase, the other Charlie if you want to say so. But the rest is the typical. The trio (including Curly still of course) are clumsy fools, yet even in the profession of firefighters they somehow manage to become unlikely heroes eventually. The boss character as well as the damsel in distress and the main antagonist are the usual Stooges stuff and you can find pretty much the exact same characters in many other short movies from the trio. Same applies to the story. The comedy isn't too great either despite a decent cast that includes prolific western actors and Chaplin co-stars. It's all about the script and this one's simply not good enough. So as a whole, this film gets a thumbs-down from me because neither the comedy nor the more dramatic moments are essentially working. Not a failure, but really only worth checking out for the very biggest fans of the gang. I give it a thumbs-down.