PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 8/12/05)


Further cementing America's reputation as stupid and callous imperialists to foreigners everywhere, Rob Schneider reminds us that he really can coast on career fumes forever with this re-used condom of a sequel to 1999's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. That's right, audiences have been holding their breath for six years to witness more of the exact same fart and boner jokes, as aqua-life aficionado and total jackass loser Deuce (Schneider) is again duped by his pimp buddy T.J. (Eddie Griffin) into picking up "she-johns" as a cheap "man-whore," but with a twist: this time, he's in Amsterdam! Cowriter Schneider strains his SNL-vet experience by stretching a lame skit-length gag into yet another hour-and-a-half, forcibly plotting his leisure-suit Larry to work undercover and bait a serial killer who preys on regional "prosti-dudes." When that ripcord gets pulled by first-time director Mike Bigelow (poor guy), Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo plays like a second-rate Mad Magazine racing through a version of The Aristocrats as if its crap punchline was actually the prize.

Not to chastise the movie for simply being rude or crude — since The Wedding Crashers proved that hormone-raging '80s throwbacks can still be harmless fun — but this contemptible sex-com redux should be taken to task for how its infantilized yucks (Schneider literally wears a diaper and bonnet early on) give license to entertaining closed-minded acceptances of very real human ugliness. A baldly racist chicken-and-waffles joke concludes that "it's funny because it's true," Asian men only appear on-screen for buck teeth and tiny penis references, and T.J.'s ongoing hysteria over being judged as gay (a fate more upsetting to him than accusations of murder) validates homophobia as a rational concern. Gross-out pros like the Farrelly Brothers know the subtle distinctions between laughing at and with the physically disabled, whereas Deuce suggests to a hunchbacked dame and a large-eared woman to seek out plastic surgery. (They both get breast enlargements, so misogyny joins the fun!) Even South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone approach satire with an unbiased rule of nothing sacred nor taboo, yet Schneider's buffoon comes dressed as an innocent do-gooder with endearingly misanthropic habits. Nowadays, political correctness may be just a fading buzzword and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo "just a dumb comedy," but is it appropriate to release a movie that dilutes all Europeans into degradingly sleazy, U.S.-bashing stereotypes, most guiltily personified by Fred Armisen's obnoxiously reworked Euro Trip cameo? What the deuce were they thinking?

—Aaron Hillis