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Reviews
Three Wise Guys (2004)
Fun piece of holiday fluff
I watched this movie because I was stuck in the hospital, got out 12/22/06, and needed something not-too-involved to do while waiting for discharge orders and paperwork, and blah blah blah. So, I got pulled into this movie by Joey, who (I thought to myself...) really wants to be David Boreanez. Then I realized that *that* is very uncharitable to Eddie McClintock. It's not his fault that the wardrobe people dressed him like a pulp-fiction gangster with Angel's hairstyle and leather jacket. One character I found exceptionally likable was Katey Sagal's "Mrs. C." She somehow managed to pull off a sweetly devoted wife while sending off the vibe that she could be one dangerous woman if the situation called for it.
Anyway, I got sucked in, and found myself really enjoying this film. Many of the tongue-in-cheek references to the Christmas story of Jesus's birth with a healthy dash of pop culture were very clever, and I chuckled to myself frequently (that might have been the pain meds, though...see above reference to my hospital stay). It wasn't until the end that I "got" Boy and Girl were Joey/Joseph and Mary, and that it was a stable of sorts they were in, not a farm outbuilding (I realize, of course, that's what a stable is, but...oh, you know what I mean).
Three Wise Guys moved along at a pleasant pace, not so fast as to seem unrealistic in its timing or too quickly to miss the jokes, and not so slow that you lose sight of where the plot must be going.
If I had to pick a couple of elements that I just didn't like, the first would be...how many women who are THAT pregnant are so un-swollen that they could wear boots like that? How many 9-months pregnant women could *walk* in boots like that? For that matter, how many massively-pregnant women could run, crouch, pee behind a bush, and basically out-think and out-maneuver 3 professional hit men? It shouldn't have been much of a competition, if one at all...especially with her in those boots, and all.
Secondly, there were a few Biblical references that were just out-and-out over the top. While some were cute (I particularly liked the fact that the Drummer's name was Jake Marley, and the name of the town where they finally caught up with him was named Pahrump), some were foppish and awkward (the pan of the sign for the city of Nazareth, for example, was just overtly obvious, and the doling out of presents after the birth of Baby was a mite bit clichéd).
All in all, I think this was a light, cute, entertaining piece of holiday fluff. Probably not destined to become the classics that The Christmas Story (how that became a holiday standard, I'll never understand) and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation have become (in regards to modern classics, that is; nothing holds a candle to the old stand-bys Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life), but a fun piece of entertainment nonetheless.