Tom and I watched The Three Stooges last night. Not the original shorts from many years ago, but the Farrelly Brothers remake from 2012. As a child I loved The Three Stooges, whose black and white high-jinx, knuckleheadery and slapstick was a frequent guest in our lounge room. My father hated them. I don't really know why, though put-downs of anything were not uncommon for him.

Still, I approached the Hollywood homage with trepidation, having seen the disaster that was Thunderbirds, for example. I needn't have worried. Rather than a remake, it was more like a new episode. Well acted and containing all the key elements of the comedic form that made the Stooges popular, I am still laughing at some of the scenes. Most critics panned the movie as pointless, poorly plotted (as if this was ever a consideration in the originals!) and just plain silly. 'Why would anyone want to laugh at this dated nonsense?' is the subtext of most of these self-important screeds.

And I think that the answer is obvious. Low comedy, for want of a better term, has always been popular with ordinary people. It's lineage can be traced from the Greeks through Shakespeare, the Commedia dell'arte, puppetry like Punch and Judy, the music hall tradition and modern cartoon animation, to name but a few. It's popular with the masses, you might say, but not necessarily so with the political class (who can be easily pilloried) or high art comsumers, whose pretentions make if difficult for them to be anything other than sniffy.

If you find your self wanting to laugh our loud, but thinking that, for reasons of taste or cultivation you shouldn't, then maybe you have a problem.