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There's
Something About Mary |
DIRECTORS
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
SCREENWRITERS
Ed Decter
John J. Strauss
Peter Farrelly
Bobby Farrelly
STORY
BY
Ed Decter
John J. Strauss
PRODUCERS
Frank Beddor
Michael Steinberg
Bradley Thomas
Charles B. Wessler
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Mark Irwin
MUSIC
Jonathan Richman
EDITOR
Christopher Greenbury
CAST
Cameron Diaz (Mary Jensen)
Matt Dillon (Pat Healy)
Ben Stiller (Ted Stroehmann)
Lee Evans (Tucker)
Chris Elliott (Woogie)
Lin Shaye (Magda)
Jeffrey Tambor (Sully)
Markie Post (Sheila Jensen)
Keith David (Charlie Jensen)
W. Earl Brown (Warren Jensen)
Sarah Silverman (Brenda)
Khandi Alexander (Joanieson)
Jonathan Richman (Jonathan)
Lenny Clarke (Lenny)
Harland Williams (Hitchhiker)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 119m
U.S. release: July 15, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
site
Other Farrelly
Bros. films
reviewed on this site:
- Dumb
and Dumber
- Kingpin
- Me,
Myself & Irene
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There's
Something About Mary
is crude, vulgar, reprehensible, and probably a threat to the
American way of life -- in a word, hilarious. Directed by Rhode
Island brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the disreputable auteurs
who made Dumb
and Dumber and Kingpin,
the movie pours two unstable elements into the same flask: romantic
comedy and gross-out humor. The Farrellys' next genre should
be the tearjerker -- I'd love to see what they'd do with The Horse
Whisperer. (Think of the poignant drama as Kristin Scott
Thomas in her high heels slips on cow flop...)
Cameron Diaz is Mary, the Farrellys' (and many other guys') ideal
woman: a looker who's compassionate, down to earth, and looking
for "a paunchy guy who likes golf and beer." She hasn't
had much luck holding onto a guy, though, and in the film's 1985
opening sequence we learn why: Her brother Warren (W. Earl Brown)
is retarded and tends to scare people away. For Mary, this is
just as well: If a guy can't deal with Warren, she doesn't want
to deal with the guy.
One guy who gets along with Mary and Warren is Ted (Ben Stiller),
a pimply dweeb with braces in 1985. Touched by Ted's well-meaning
(if ineffectual) defense of Warren against a bully, Mary asks
him to the prom -- which leads to an escalating series of mishaps,
some of which haven't been revealed in the trailer, so I won't
spoil them. Cut to 1998: Ted, now a freelance writer, is still
haunted by the memory of Mary (and the events of the aborted
prom night). He won't be able to get over her until he finds
out what she's doing now, so he hires sleazo private eye Pat
Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down in Miami. Pat, who is paunchy
and likes beer, takes one look at Mary and decides to take up
golf.
The movie is shrewdly cast. If Ben Stiller hadn't proved in Flirting
with Disaster that he's willing to look like a hapless
dork, he certainly proves it here. Hardly a scene goes by that
he's not beaten, humiliated, and generally degraded -- he's a
great sport, like Woody Harrelson in the better scenes in Kingpin
(a much less successful Farrelly effort). Matt Dillon demolishes
what's left of his teen-idol image from the '80's; he spends
half the movie in ugly fake choppers. His performance is even
funnier if you caught Wild Things, where he played another
kind of sap in the middle of a Miami triangle. Diaz, as always,
is a fresh and stabilizing presence; her beauty is an effective
counterpoint to all the grossness.
But if There's Something About Mary is a hit -- and it
deserves to be -- W. Earl Brown will become an unlikely star.
Brown has been around the margins of other movies, most memorably
as Kenny, Courteney Cox's doomed cameraman in Scream,
but here, convincingly playing the cheerful (and sometimes violent)
Warren, he breaks out and steals the movie. One Warren scene
near the beginning -- it involves Ted and a baseball -- made
me laugh so hard I got lightheaded. Brown makes you laugh with
Warren, not at him, and the humor in his character comes from
how others react to him (and what he does to them). It's not
long before he wins the audience over completely; he's the best
movie hero of the summer.
A movie like this is difficult to review, because you have to
suggest how funny it is without actually explaining why (and
thus spoiling the jokes). There's a vicious little dog, as you've
seen in the ads, but the Farrellys wisely don't overwork him
-- and the jokes always go a step or two farther than what you
saw in the trailer. There's a certain heartlessness in the Farrellys'
approach to gross-out humor, but this time there's some heart,
too. When Mary is shown working with retarded people like her
brother, the scene is more natural and compassionate than you'd
expect from a movie like this. In fact, in this comedy, it's
mostly the "normal" people who are ugly, stupid, and
laughable. Very laughable.
The Farrellys stir up the two genres in the flask, and the result
is its own genre: the gross-out romance. They already did the
gross-out road movie and the gross-out sports movie; Mel Brooks
has done the gross-out Western (Blazing Saddles) and Peter
Jackson has done the gross-out horror movie (Dead Alive),
so I suggest the Farrellys turn their comedic focus to the gross-out
blockbuster. For example, wouldn't Armageddon
have been better if one of the heroes had farted in his space
suit just once? Or if Godzilla had the runs? Or if Mulder had
leaned in to kiss Scully, only to see a big, whistling booger
hanging from her nose? |