"Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" (1999) Reviewed by Christian Pyle Directed by Mike Mitchell Written by Harris Goldberg and Rob Schneider Starring Rob Schneider, William Forsythe, Eddie Griffin, Arija Bareikis, and Oded Fehr Grade: C-
Deuce Bigalow (Rob Schneider) cleans fish tanks. Yeah, I didn't know that was a real job either. One of his customers is Antoine LeConte (Oded Fehr), a successful gigolo. When Antoine has to go to Sweden for three weeks, he lets Deuce use his house to look after an ailing $800 fish. Fooling around, Deuce sets fire to the kitchen and smashes a $6000 fish tank. After taking a try at one of Antoine's clients and earning $10, Deuce decides to prostitute himself to raise the money to replace the fish tank before the fiery-tempered Antoine returns.
Enter T. J. (Eddie Griffin), a pimp for "man-whores," who arranges for Deuce to service an assortment of women whose imperfections keep them from dating. There's an enormous woman (played by transvestite porn star Chi Chi La Rue) who hides food in her clothes. There's Claire (Gail O'Grady) whose narcolepsy causes her to fall asleep every few minutes. Tina (Torsten Voges) is so tall her face doesn't fit on the screen, and Ruth (Amy Poehler) has Tourette's Syndrome and shouts obscenities without warning. Finally there's Kate (Arija Bareikis) whose sorority sisters secretly paid her fare. She seems perfect, and Deuce quickly falls in love with her. (She does, we discover later, have an imperfection, but Deuce decides it isn't important.)
Deuce's life is complicated by a bothersome cop (William Forsythe) looking for information on Antoine and by Kate's discovery of his man-whoring. However, neither threat generates much suspense. The formula is so familiar that we know how it will end from the start.
"Deuce Bigalow" is the first project from Adam Sandler's company Happy Madison, the formation of which assures that we'll be seeing the Sandler style of comedy mass-produced at an increasing rate in years to come. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The good news is that Sandler doesn't actually appear in "Deuce" and that Rob Schneider and Eddie Griffin are funnier than Sandler. Schneider has a sweetness that makes the clueless but good-hearted Deuce believable. Griffin's delivery is dead-on, especially in the coining of "technical terms" for T. J.'s profession, as in "Don't make me he-bitch man-slap you!"
There's the expected amount of toilet humor in "Deuce." (For one thing, Deuce's dad is a men's room attendant). Does anyone over the age of eight actually find bowel movements that funny? For most of us, I think that childhood fascination with bodily functions disappears when we hit the far-side of puberty and discover how funny sex is. I, for one, will be glad when the toilet trend is finally flushed.
Bottom line: "Deuce" doesn't offer anything new but it is intermittently funny.
© 2000 Christian L. Pyle
Read my reviews and others at the Mad Review: http://www.madreview.com/main.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