Film review by Kevin Patterson
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY Rating: **1/2 (out of four) R, 1998 Directors: Peter & Bobby Farrelly Screenplay: Ed Decter, John J. Straus, Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly Starring Cast: Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller
I didn't expect this to happen, but I finally saw THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and I really don't have too much to say about it. I figured that either I would be extremely grossed out and offended, or I would find it hysterically funny, or both. Instead, I found myself feeling strangely indifferent to the whole thing. Yes, it's gross, and yes, it's funny, but it's nothing to write home about on either count.
This may be partly a result of the fact that others had told me about the most, uh, unusual jokes before I saw the movie, and therefore the shock factor was diluted. The movie is, in fact, a lot more explicit with vulgar sight gags than most comedies. But since I had been told, for example, that Ben Stiller would have a slight...mishap, shall we say, when zipping up his pants, I pretty much knew what was going to happen as soon as he walked into the bathroom. The same goes for another disgusting scene in which Cameron Diaz's character rubs some gel in her hair that, well, isn't actually gel: I knew the joke was coming a good three minutes ahead of time.
A lot of the jokes are equally tasteless. Some of them, particularly those involving a dog on speed, are pretty funny, some of them start to make the audience uncomfortable with such questionable tactics as making fun of the mentally and physically handicapped (though this wasn't played nearly as offensively as I was afraid it might be), and some, such as a guy who walks around with a grotesque skin condition the whole time, are just dumb and pointless. By and large, the funniest jokes are the ones that just aim for plain weirdness without worrying about being gross, such as when a hitchhiker explains that he plans to make money by producing a seven minute abs training video (thereby cutting into the "Eight-Minute Abs" video market).
Surprisingly enough, one of the strengths of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY is that the story, in which Ted (Ben Stiller) tries to ingratiate himself to Mary (Cameron Diaz), for whom he has carried a torch for thirteen years, is handled reasonably well and actually has us rooting for Ted and Mary by the end. Among the obstacles are four other men, (including a P.I. Ted had originally hired to find her, since they'd lost touch after high school), and all of whom go to ridiculous lengths of deception to impress Mary. It's fairly easy to understand why, as Mary spends much of her time caring for her handicapped brother and generally seems to be most good-natured person on the face of the planet. There's a fairly complex web of lies and fake identities involved in all this, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Farrellys kept it all together and the clever, composed manner in which it all becomes clear.
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY has been hyped largely as a gross-out comedy in the tradition of John Waters, but to me it seemed more like a romantic comedy, only with gags that are much more low-brow and bizarre than what you'd normally see. As such, it's reasonably entertaining, but it's not the love-it-or-hate-it spectacle that I had expected, and in the end it's actually one of my more forgettable cinematic experiences of the year.
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