THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY 1998
A film review by Timothy Voon
Copyright 1998 Timothy Voon
2 :-) :-) for that girl!
Director: Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly Writers: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly & Ed Decter & John J. Strauss Cast: Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Lee Evans, Chris Elliott
There certainly is something about Mary. In one of the funniest and darkest comedies this year we have a mixture of the vile and the hilarious, that will keep you simultaneously shocked and amused at the same time. This seems to be the winning combination for the Farrelly brother team.
Cameron Diaz is undeniably charming as Mary, who has up to five guys obsessed with her throughout the movie, if not the entire male audience. She is the gal of every straight guy's fantasy – pretty, wholesome, intelligent and outright nice. Of course a woman like Mary doesn't exist in the real world, that's why we have Hollywood to create the illusion. There's a lot to disbelieve about Mary, but because we are always looking for the perfect someone, she exists in all of us.
This movie has interesting ways of dealing with issues like masturbation, kissing dogs, wrinkled breasts, hair gel, missing sperm, intellectually disabled people, hives, testes and zippers. Every time you are on the brink of throwing up, the humour some how pulls you back in time before you barf in shock. It is a dangerous tight rope of balancing what is acceptable to watch on screen and pushing the limits of the viewer's tolerance. This could easily have been a disaster if it was just out to shock, but the witty script and intelligent plotting saves the day and somehow makes Mary a success, when it could easily have been a Turkey.
Other notable notes is Matt Dillon, who plays against his usual stereotypic role of body hunk and plays a sleaze with big teeth, graciously. Ben Stiller is wonderfully naïve and everybody else seems to team up extremely well, making Mary one of the zanniest experiences you'll come across this Spring.
Timothy Voon
e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au
Movie Archives http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Tim+Voon
Movies In Melbourne
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~pfowler/week/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews