Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. I’ve known Pete and Bobby Farrelly casually for a while now, and one of the films that they’ve always talked about as a favorite of theirs is Elaine May’s great THE HEARTBREAK KID. As long as I’ve known them, they’ve always talked about doing their own riff on the basic idea, and now... they have. So how is it? Does it live up to all the time they’ve put into thinking about it? They just tested it for the first time the other night, and one thing’s for sure... the Farrellys use the test screening process about as well as anyone can, so I’m sure there’s a lot of fine-tuning ahead before it finally gets released. Let’s see what “Dandelo” has to say about it:
Long time reader, first time writer. I’ll try to stay away from too many spoilers. Tuesday night, there was a screening of the new Farrelly Brothers/Ben Stiller movie at the Galleria in Sherman Oaks, CA. As of now, it’s Untitled, and we were told we were the first audience to see it. I sat four seats away from a Farrelly, so they were probably telling the truth. To gain some perspective, I haven’t been the biggest fan of the Farrelly Brothers flicks of late. “Fever Pitch” was just alright, and I thought “Stuck on You”, “Shallow Hal”, and “Osmosis Jones” were about as funny as cancer. You know, the serious kind. Malignant. They had the same look and feel as their earlier movies; there just wasn’t any cum in anyone’s hair. Armless assholes who were friends with the Amish were NOT bowling while dead parrots were NOT being sold to blind kids. So my expectations were low going into this. And I was pleasantly surprised. This new one harks back to the earlier work. It’s not yet perfect-it was clearly a rough cut-but I’ll be skull-fucked-in-the-ass if there weren’t at least four or five scenes that rival those earlier efforts. Here come a few spoilers. The movie’s based on the Charles Grodin comedy “The Heartbreak Kid”. I’ve never seen it, but from what IMDB tells me, the stories are pretty similar. Ben Stiller’s character, a schlub named Eddie, meets a girl named Lila (the HOT Malin Akerman) and understandably falls in love with her. She does environmental work and tells him two weeks after meeting her that she’s being transferred to Holland. There’s another worker that would go, but he’s married, and they don’t transfer married people. FLASH. Lightbulb goes off in Eddie’s head. Fuck, I should marry this smoking-hot chick and she won’t have to move. Genius, right? Well, no. On their honeymoon, Eddie finds out she’s the most annoying, bat-shit crazy bitch on the planet. Courtney-fucking-Love style. When they get to Cabo, he meets the real girl he’s meant to be with, Miranda (Michelle Monoghan from “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), and thus comes Eddie’s predicament. He JUST got married, but his wife’s a fucking nutter butter, and this other girl’s sweet. And pretty hot herself. What’s a guy to do? End of most spoilers. The movie is fucking hilarious for the first hour. It’s R-rated as hell, and it uses that license for some great raunchy scenes. The problem is the movie’s two hours long, and there’s a good stretch in that second hour that could use some work. I don’t think this problem is insurmountable, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But first…the first hour. Could someone please tell me where the fuck Malin Akerman came from? This chick is unbelievable. She goes for broke in a role of lot of actresses wouldn’t have the balls to attempt and she fucking tears up the screen. She’s sweet then she’s irritating then she’s a raving lunatic. She’s perfect! According to her credits she was in Lisa Kudrow’s HBO show “The Comeback”. I actually might watch that now. Wait, no I won’t, because I’m not a fucking vagina, but Ms. Akerman has my total respect. She holds her own against Stiller and does a great job depicting the 180 degree spin her character takes. It doesn’t seem forced; it just seems funny. Minor Spoiler - It’s ironic that Rob Corddry and Jerry Stiller have a conversation about how all funny chicks are a little manly-i.e. Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, etc. (in reality they’re wrong because while both those examples do have dicks, neither are funny). Believe me, there is nothing manly about Ms. Akerman. Wait till you see the sex scenes. I never knew it was possible to laugh so hard with a hard-on. Now I know. This girl is a star-I’m saying it first. The way Akerman and Stiller play off each other is pitch-perfect and really brings back that old Farrelly feeling. The rest of the audience loved it as much as I did, and for awhile, I thought this was “There’s Something About Mary 2”. Until Michelle Monoghan comes on the screen. Now listen, I like her a lot. Liked her in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”. Liked her in MI:3. And I would like her in this…if it didn’t seem like she was from another movie. It’s not her fault; it’s the writing. There’s a good half hour where Ben Stiller falls in love with her where there just aren’t many jokes. They forgot to write in the funny. It’s not terrible, it’s just a lot slower and unnecessarily long. The movie starts trying to tell a story instead of just letting one flow. After that, there’s another big hilarious comic piece (involving aquatic life and the female genitalia) that leads into the last twenty minutes of the movie, which are pretty good. Not as good as the beginning, but not bad. So basically, the movie has a half hour that’s out of place. Some of it is needed to get from point A to point B, but it can be drastically cut down. And I imagine it will be. Like I said, there was a Farrelly sitting a few seats from me, and he could hear the deafening roar of the silence during that half hour just as well as I could. Especially when it was contrasted with the non-stop laughter of the previous hour. If they edit this thing right, we’ll have the best Farrelly Brothers comedy since “Mary”. If they don’t, the best since “Irene”, which isn’t the worst thing a movie could be. Here’s hoping for “Mary”. If you use this, call me Dandelo.
