Bubble Trouble (1953)

Sorry, this movie sucks

From my favorite movies..

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

1953 marked the beginning of the decline of stooge shorts, mainly due to cost cutting measures taken by director/producer Jules White, who started taking footage from stooge shorts made in the late 1940s and editing them with some new footage & then selling them off to theaters as "new" 3 stooges films.Good work if you can get it, I suppose, not to mention a good way to rip off the theater owners back then who thought they were getting new stooge films. But back in the days long before VCRs and DVD players were the fashion, people going to the movies back then probably didn't feel like they were getting ripped off.As for this short, how anyone can say it's better than the original is beyond me. More than about 90% of this short is "All Gummed Up" and the little bit of new footage at the end is nothing to write home about. If I had to be brutally honest, the whole ape angle is downright lame. And I'm a big Shemp fan, but honestly the remakes were for the most part, forgettable & this is definitely one of the worst, right along with "Hot Ice" or "Flagpole Jitters".3 out of 10.

Directed by Jules White, "Bubble Trouble" is a fine and funny Three Stooges short. A remake of "All Gummed Up" (1947), it contains much stock footage from that short as well. Most of the Stooge remakes from 1953 to 1956 are not nearly as good as the originals, but "Bubble Trouble" is one of the few exceptions, and there are two reasons for this. First, "All Gummed Up" actually ENDS with the bubble-gum-on-the-cake gag, leaving the short somewhat out of balance (as one Stooge author wrote, it was a sign of poor judgment on the part of Jules White). Second, the original short has the Stooges' grouchy old landlord Amos Flint (wonderfully played by Emil Sitka) transform into a baby when he tries the boys' fountain-of-youth serum. So Jules White must have figured that "Bubble Trouble" would be a lot funnier if the bubble gum gag was placed in the middle and if Flint transformed into a talking gorilla. White was correct in his assumption.Undoubtedly the main highlights of "Bubble Trouble" are the two key gags mentioned above. In another classic Stooge moment, the boys mix all kinds of weird ingredients to make their serum, and they shake up the concoction in an old boot (a gag used in other Stooge shorts as well). And please, let us not overlook the contributions of Emil Sitka as the hilarious Amos Flint (whether a human or a gorilla) or Christine McIntyre as Flint's wife Cerina, who turns into a lovely young woman upon tasting the boys' serum. McIntyre even gets a chance to use her beautiful soprano voice, as she does in a few other Stooge shorts, too; when Cerina proudly carries her cake out of the back room, she sings the first two lines of "I'll Take Romance," written by Ben Oakland and Oscar Hammerstein II.To summarize, "Bubble Trouble" is a must for all Three Stooges fans.

It's these type of remade dogs from the mid-50's that makes me wonder why Jules White even bothered. This short should have been titled "All Gummed Up part deux: The Director's cut" or something. But I guess this short could be worth something to those who haven't seen the original since it basically "borrows" nearly all the old footage, and Columbia has released this short on VHS & DVD (why, instead of a much better remake like 'Loose Loot' I have no idea)?!?Grade: D-

Although BUBBLE TROUBLE may contain a large amount of old footage from ALL GUMMED UP, I think this is great. The last five minutes of the short is changed into a scene where Amos Flint turns into a gorilla and fights the Stooges. One of the Stooges best remakes.There's also about two seconds worth of stock footage from CORNY CASANOVAS. Amos Flint pushes Shemp against the wall. A flowerpot falls from the wall and lands on Shemp's head. Compare the scene of the flower falling off the wall to CORNY.A great remake. Purchase this TODAY!Grade: A-