DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *
Bob Bigalow (Richard Riehle) is a tuxedoed member of the restaurant business, but he's neither a waiter nor a maitre d'. He's a bathroom attendant whose duties include cleaning up really awful toilet messes.
On Bob's birthday, his son, Deuce (Rob Schneider) comes to visit with his new girlfriend, Kate (Arija Bareikis), and they bring a birthday cake for him. The lovebirds bring him the cake right into the stall, where he is unstopping a badly clogged toilet. Bob eats the cake with his hands and sticks his fingers in his mouth to clean them off. Granted, this is the low point of DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO, but the rest of the crude story isn't much better.
The setup has Deuce, a fish tank cleaner by profession, babysitting a sick fish at the apartment of a rich and successful male gigolo, Antoine Laconte (Oded Fehr). Antoine, a collector of ancient weaponry, has given Deuce strict orders to make sure his expensively furnished apartment isn't harmed in the 3 weeks that he's off to Europe. Needless to say, Deuce will shortly destroy the place in a fit of bad slapstick antics.
In order to make the money to restore the apartment, Deuce takes a job as a "male-whore" for Antoine's "man-pimp." (The lame script by Harris Goldberg and Rob Schneider has other, earthier names as well.)
The movie's idea of comedy is to force Deuce to cope with the problems of women with a wide variety of handicaps and unusual physical characteristics. From a 600 pound women like Jabba Lady (Big Boy) to women who cuss uncontrollably like Ruth (Amy Poehler), the women are made to look almost like members of a circus freak show. There's even an 8-foot tall woman, whose face is never shown, but to whom strangers call out insults as she walks with Deuce. Funny, huh? You're not laughing? Neither was I.
Did I mention the detective, played by William Forsythe, who has an obsession with showing Deuce his private parts in public in order to get advice? And did I mention that this scene is repeated a half-dozen times?
So, was it ever funny? I think I laughed once, but, for the life of me, I can't remember why.
DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO runs 1:30. It is rated R for sexual situations, crude sexual humor, nudity and language and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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