THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Directors: Robert Farrelly and Peter Farrelly Writers: Ed Decter, John J. Strauss, Robert Farrelly, and Peter Farrelly Starring: Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, Chris Elliott, Lin Shaye, Jeffrey Tambor, Keith David, Markie Post, Harland Williams III, Richard Jenkins, Helena Christensen, Brett Favre
There's many a disgusting moment in "There's Something About Mary" that it would be really easy for this film to just be one long toilet joke film...and that's not totally a bad thing, not if the jokes are actually funny. The ones in this film are. I know that Roger Ebert is the one who always always always uses the Mel Brooks quote in defense of his film "The Producers," that his film "rises below vulgarity," but I'm going to steal that from him and apply it to this film. This film also rises below vulgarity, but it takes it a step further as well.
"There's Something About Mary" is a lot like the Farrelly Brothers' previous two films, "Dumb and Dumber" and "Kingpin," two hilarious films that proved to even the biggest snob that fart jokes, bodily fluids, and other forms of toilet humor could be turned into almost an art form. But unlike "Dumb and Dumber" and like "Kingpin," this film has a good plot and characters that we actually care about and maybe in a way identify with. The most important thing about making comedy is likable characters, and this film has that.
But this film's actually deeper than that. The film deals with the 13-year-long obsession of a young, neurotic man, Ted (Ben Stiller), for a woman who would be his high school sweetheart, Mary (a glowing Cameron Diaz) if he had gone to the prom with her...which he didn't because of a little, um, problem (you've seen it in the trailers - it's even funnier in the actual film). Out of desperation to find her because he figures he's in love with her ("Crushes don't last 13 years, do they?" he asks his friend, played by Chris Elliott, in his funniest performance in years...yes, even funnier than he was in "Cabin Boy" *snort*), he hires an off-kilter detective, Pat Healy (Matt Dillon, also glowing), to track her down for him.
Pat does find her, and from this point on, the plot becomes completely convoluted and jumps everywhere. We meet numerous supporting characters, like a British architect friend of Mary's (Lee Evans, from "Mouse Hunt"), who has a little secret (not to mention crutches), and Mary's live-in roomate (or something), who's been tanning for so long she has passed George Hamilton on the skin pigmentation chart. And there's a little dog that you've seen tons of in the commercials as well, who is also even funnier in the movie. I won't tell you how they all fit in to the story since one of the true joys is trying to follow what's going on, and being surprised when things happen.
The Farrelly's have a great sense of humor that is somewhere between very low-brow and scathingly satirical, kinda like Monty Python only even more disgusting. They make fun of whomever they want, and aren't afraid to tell the most disgusting of jokes. The fact that this is their first film to get an "R" rating helps because it gives them a liscence to do practically anything, which for the crowd this film is trying to attract, helps enormously. This film is crude, I will admit it, but I admit it with a big fat grin on my face. Why do I highly recommend a film where Cameron Diaz uses a substance I was afraid to mention to my parents for fear of miscommunication about my "experience" as hair gel?
The answer is two-fold. One reason is because I laughed my ass off so hard that I was actually convulsing and hitting the chair in front of me. I haven't done that in real long time. The second and probably not as important reason is because this film is remarkably intelligent and totally honest about an intriguing topic, the topic of obsession. The Farrelly Brothers have taken a human weakness we all suffer from and have skewered it into a film that is both funny and brutally frank, not only about its sense of toilet humor, but also about what it deals with. Although this film lives in a surreal world where everyone's a characateur of a certain weird stereotype laced with acid, and basically anything can and will happen, we nevertheless can identify with some of the characters in this film because they're mirrors of us. Ben Stiller's character is probably the most human character the Farrelly's have ever dreamed up, and we can all in some form feel for his obsession because we've all been there at some point, no matter how badly. This is a film that has the humanity to recognize that not only is obsession not love but mere selfish behavior and that it makes people become more and more pathetic, but it can also lead us to a greater understanding of ourselves and perhaps even make our intentions more worthy of someone's affections.
It's often really weird when a film that is this funny also has humanity and honesty to it. I'm really shocked at this not only because of that factor, but also because the humor in this film is actually raised to a whole other level of thinking. We laugh at this film not only because of the outrageous jokes that we are told (most of which I will not divulge), but also because we can see ourselves in this film, and what is more therapeutic than to look at ourselves being parodied on the screen, and laugh right at it?
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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