Product Details

• Actors: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Joe DeRita, Jerome Cowan, Anna-Lisa
• Directors: David Lowell Rich
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: May 23, 1995
• Run Time: 76 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303442358
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,786 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Have Rocket, Will Travel is the first Three Stooges feature film after the team became television icons and Joe DeRita was called in to replace Joe Besser (who had replaced Shemp, who had replaced Curly). Aimed at a younger audience, it included a good deal of the physical violence their Snow White film tried to avoid. Curly Joe was given the old Curly shtick of being struck by a tool, exclaiming a painful "Oooo" and then giving a surprised reaction when the tool appears bent from the contact with his cement- like head. He is also prone to a weaker version of his role model's "Woowoowoo."

The plot revolves around the team's accidental launch into space and their adventures on a Venus that looks identical to Earth, including breathable air but housing a giant tarantula that breathes fire and a unicorn that speaks slightly archaic English. There is also an unconvincing robot that is lonesome enough to create three fellow robots in the form of the three Earthlings. This leads merely to a routine already familiar to viewers of old-time comedies: a chase down a corridor lined with doors through which the six are exiting and reentering in a physically impossible way.

The final sequence in which the returning "heroes" wreck a social event is overly familiar from the earlier films, especially the old "sofa spring stuck the rear" routine; and indeed it all seems tacked on to stretch the film to its 76 minutes. Light-comedy veteran Jerome Cowan does his best in a role that would have been handled by Jimmy Finlayson in a Laurel & Hardy film. It is good to hear the team sing the title and closing songs, but they add little to the film.

Children will love this feature, but they must be advised that the eye-poking and hitting are all tricks not to be emulated. --Frank Behrens

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Moe's Uglier In Person, Rather Than As A Robot.", April 25, 2000

By 

Joshua Downham (Muncie, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Have Rocket, Will Travel (The Three Stooges) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Soon after the great success of their re-released classic two-reelers on television (for which Columbia Pictures made $12 million), Columbia finally, after 24 years, offered the stooges a chance to star in their first full-length motion picture, titled "Have Rocket, Will Travel"(1959). They quickly accepted the offer and filming began. Sadly, Curly and Shemp never got this chance. Joe DeRita had filled in the third stooge slot in 1958. "Have Rocket, Will Travel"(1959) turned out to be one of the top box-office money-makers of 1959 and is the best 3 Stooges movie ever produced with Joe DeRita(Joe Besser was unable to stay with the act, due to his wife's failing health).

The plot: Moe, Larry, and Joe are janitors at a space laboratory who try to help Dr. Ingrid Naarveg(Anna-Lisa) produce a rocket fuel after her boss, J.P. Morse(Jerome Cowan) threatens to expel her if she can't perfect the fuel in time for the launch. The stooges concoct the fuel themselves and are accidentally set off into space. While trying to contact the boys, Naarveg discovers that they are unknowingly heading towards Venus.

"Have Rocket, Will Travel"(1959) is the trio's best feature in many ways. It's the one film that plays out like a 3 Stooges two-reeler. It remains faithful to their original shorts throughout. DeRita reenacts the spring on trousers gag and gets caught in a maze of pipes. "Have Rocket, Will Travel"(1959) is the funnest stooge film to watch, mainly because of its similarity to the shorts. All the fun of 4 two-reelers is packed into one hilarious movie. Only in the last half hour does the film start to become a yawner. A sequel was planned, but it never materialized.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NOT ON DVD? !!!!@@@@???!!!!, September 20, 2009

By 

Superboy Forever - See all my reviews

This review is from: Have Rocket, Will Travel (The Three Stooges) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Anybody know why this best of the Stooges, their first movie is not out on DVD??!! All of their others are!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as the other Stooges full-length feature, Three Stooges in Orbit., September 5, 2007

By 

Tom Brody (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Have Rocket, Will Travel (The Three Stooges) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The Three Stooges work as maintenance men at a rocket research facility. The film begins with stock footage showing a rocket taking off, but wavering shortly after blast off, and going off course, though the event of crashing is not shown. Then, we are shown the rocket ship sticking nose down in the ground (it is a life-sized model, not an actual rocket ship). The Three Stooges are asked to stand guard at the crash site, but they somehow enter the ship, and it tips upright, and by accident the Stooges start the ignition, and the ship zooms off to another planet, where it lands.

There is a decent zero-gravity episode, where Larry is shown floating about, attempting to retrieve a floating book.

There is little attempt to make the "other planet" seem other-worldly. It is just a desert, perhaps not far from Los Angeles. Anyway, the Stooges encounter a 50 foot spider that emits a jet of flames. Then a futuristic flying car materializes in a puff of smoke, and the Stooges board the car, and it takes them to a laboratory. Once in the laboratory, the Stooges encounter a talking robot with four arms (people inside the cubical robot, with their arms inserted into the robot's arms). And so on, and so on.

At the start of the picture we are introduced to a female Ph.D.-level rocket scientist. The director and screenwriter are to be commended for putting a female in this prominent role in a movie made way back when (1959). Another scientist, a young Robert Colbert, is shown wooing the female. The appearance of Robert Colbert was quite startling to me. Many Americans know him as a co-star, with James Darrin, in the TIME TUNNEL television series from the 1960s. TIME TUNNEL was an excellent science fiction series (I recommend the episode showing the Trojan Horse, the episode in occupied France during World War II, and the French Revolution episode).

HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL also includes a lengthy plumbing episode, taken from one of the Stooges earlier short features about plumbers. The plumbing episode, which includes floods and a multitude of strangely arranged pipes and joints, does not really fit into the story. One gets the overall impression that the Stooges were running short on comedic ideas. HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL lacks the zaniness of some of the Stooges' earlier efforts, or the later film, THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT. TWO STARS.