I have to say I agree with a lot of what's said in the other comments. No, the Stooges should not have been reduced to this. Yes, it violates a key Stooge ethic to have the guys play different, and separate, characters like this. (That ethic never needed to be stuck to more than in the sadly low-budget Besser years. Separating the guys, as in this one or FLYING SAUCER DAFFY -- presumably as a way of trying to deal with Joe "not fitting in" -- just made things worse; the guys always worked best as a true trio.) And, yes, it was a mistake to center a Stooge short so much around a non-Stooge character. As for that character, the most charitable thing I can say is that her singing, etc., must have gone over much better in 1958 than it does now. Overall, this short is just too different, and that "different-ness" is not good.
But the Stooges themselves, as always, give it their best. They still manage to be fine comic actors even with all these disadvantages. Yes, we miss the usual Moe, but he plays his atypical character here well; his fractured English is a hoot ("A mice! A mice!"). (I'm surprised no one's pointed out that each Stooge plays TWO characters in this, though in the flashback scene they don't do much funny.) And, as one who does not worship at the altar of Curly (I like Shemp best, actually), I maintain that Joe could have made a fine Stooge were it not for the low budgets and the poor scripts in which they seemed not to know what to do with him. (Joe's tap dancing -- or anyone's, actually -- doesn't fit well into a Stooge short, but it gives a hint of how much more talent this guy had than his Stooge work let him show.)
