Okay, here's the deal. It is once again confession time, boys and girls. I come before you dear people, branded a hypocrite. A fraud, a fake, and a phony. I carry a dark secret, deep in my soul, hidden. Tucked away so that only I'll ever know. But it darkens my heart to not be on the up-and-up with you folks. After much soul-searching, and, with the help of my personal spiritual advisor, Madame Rosa (from Madame Rosa's Palmistry Clinic and Bait Shop out on Route 44, "drive-thru service for all your future needs..."), I have decided to pour my soul out to you and pray to the Cinema Gods that you will accept me for what I am.
My crime is pride, folks. I have sat in this here chair, and written missives about how I appreciate a fine, smart comedy movie, one intricately structured and detailed to find the subtle nuances of the spoken word. This is very true, and I stand by those words with all my open heart, but, some nights, when the moon is blue, and the stars are in align, and the beer is exactly 33 degrees Fahrenheit, I become a "stupid" movie lover. Not a bad movie lover, which I can also be at times, but a "stupid" movie lover.
I think my first real introduction to this addiction was Caddyshack. I remember laughing so hard that I blew wax out of my left ear canal. Then, not two weeks later, I saw Kentucky Fried Movie for the first time. I was hooked. Soon, the Zuckers and Jim Abrahams teamed up to do Airplane!, and that was that. A full-fledged junkie. I lived for The Naked Gun movies, and will swear to my dying day that the first National Lampoon Vacation movie was one of the funniest things to ever crank through a projector. Top Secret, Hot Shots, those things were deadly weapons. They kept me fixed, riding a high that persisted long after the curtains closed or the videotape was rewound.
Then, one fine day, two brothers came to town. Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and with them they brought a movie called Dumb And Dumber. It was gross, it was rude, it was obnoxious, and it was funny enough to kill an ordinary man. Not out of any great wit or virtue, just out of pure goofiness. Jeff Daniels on that broken toilet. Men and ma'ams, I thought everyone in the theatre was going to implode from laughter. Jim Carrey belching that horrendous belch at the bar? Fuggedaboudit. The Farrellys struck again with, of all things, a movie about bowling. Kingpin was twice as tacky, twice as vulgar at times, and twice as funny. The entire premise was hysterical. A one-handed former state bowling champ teaching a naive Amish doofus how to hustle a bowling alley. It was The Color of Money minus the art, the cinematography, and the brains. Bill Murray's combover hairstyle alone was worth a week's salary, and, if you saw the movie, you'll know what I mean when I say you will never look at dental floss again the same way.
Guess what, folks? My connection is back in town. The Farrelly Brothers have cruised into town in a pink stretch Cadillac, and loaded with fix. And, keeping the tradition, their third movie, There's Something About Mary, starring Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, and Cameron Diaz (have mercy...) is three times as outrageous, three times as rude, and three times as funny.
Once upon a time, there was this teenage nebbish named Ted (Ben Stiller), who had an incredible crush on the high school golden girl, Mary (Cameron Diaz). Buck-tooted, mouth full of braces, scared of his own shadow, Ted can hardly believe it when Mary asks him to the Senior Prom. But, on the night of the prom, the night that could have changed Ted's life forever, he, uh, well, he gets a certain appendage (not his finger) caught in the zipper of his rental tux, mangling his "not his finger", and destroying his chance to be with his dream girl.
Cut to thirteen years later. Brother Ted is still hopelessly in love with Mary. He hires an pseudo-detective named Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) to track down his goddess. Healy traces her to Miami, where she now lives. She is still a goddess, still single, and now a surgeon. So, naturally, Healy decides that Mary is the woman for him. She's beautiful, she's got money, and she doesn't know him. Perfect. Ted finds out about the double-cross and heads to Miami himself. And the race is on.
If you can imagine an incredibly unsmart version of one of the screwball romantic comedies of the '30s and '40s, you'd be close, but you can never imagine one important detail in the formula. You can never tell just what the Farrelly Brothers are going to pull out of their bag of laughs. These guys are New Wave masters of setting up a joke, running with it for a few scenes, and letting the rude payoff just explode onscreen. They do this time and time again here, but they somehow manage to keep the romantic comedy framework in play the whole time.
It also helps that Ben Stiller is cast as the lead. If anyone out there still remembers his TV show, you know that Stiller is no slouch himself when it comes to knock-down funny. He's playing the part that is slowly becoming his trademark, the Everyguy, but, mixed into this script, even that stereotype becomes a new adventure. Matt Dillon has not been this much fun to watch since The Flamingo Kid, and, believe it or not, he does a brilliant job at slapstick and character comedy. He also manages to deliver some wonderfully funny lines wearing the largest mouthful of fake teeth I've ever seen (Mr. Ed meets a Beaver). And, Cameron Diaz. Yeah, baby! She is radiant as always, but, surprisingly, she doesn't get to be nearly as funny as she got to in My Best Friend's Wedding. She's a gifted comedy actress, but, alas, somebody here had to be the straight man. Lou had Bud, Stan had Ollie, and Ben and Matt had to have Miss Cammie. Don't get me wrong, she's funny here, but she's in "react" mode more than "clown" mode. It takes a special person to be able to do that, and she does fine. (And looks fine to boot.)
I wish there was some way I could tell you what little things to watch for, but I know I would get my butt handed to me like a helmet if I ruined even one joke. Safe to say this, though: if you've seen the trailer over the past few weeks, remember how hard the audience laughed at it? That was a three-minute trailer. This is almost two hours of that laughter, virtually from start to finish.
Some critics will knock it for going overboard, but that's what made Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin so danged funny. The Farrellys go gleefully to the limit, then, instead of inching past it, they hire a marching band and parade their happy cans right on by, waving and tooting the tuba, leading the fanfare as they push the envelope of "rude and crude" out of their way and head straight for the stratosphere of out there. And you know what? I love it. I love every minute of it. It's exactly what the National Lampoon did, in print, on the radio, and on the screen. It's what made the team of Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams so wonderfully absurd, and it will be what makes Bobby and Peter Farrelly a powerhouse for years to come. One can only hope the new heirs apparent, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of "South Park"), will throw some friendly competition their way with their first movie BASEketball, coming here directly. Are we ready for the war to see who can earn the biggest laughs, no matter what? I, for one, call dibs on contest judge.
Now, if you're looking for Woody Allen book-laughs or Robin Williams' wackiness, I highly suggest you keep right on lookin'. But, if you want to laugh like you've never laughed, I highly suggest you get your tails in the car and see There's Something About Mary. And, I make a prediction right now. You see it once, you're gonna see it again, and you're gonna take someone with you who hasn't seen it. Why? Because, no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to explain to them when they ask, "What's so funny?" They'll have to see it for themselves, and you'll have to go with them, just to watch them.
Image copyright 20th Century Fox.
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