WATCH THE TRAILER

PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 7/19/06)

I'm sorry, what year are we living in? That anyone in their right minds could be fooled into thinking that two hours of overt homophobia with a disingenuous punch line about tolerance is okay makes me pig-biting mad. That the seemingly prototypical audience I watched it with laughed like stoned hyenas makes me somewhat embarrassed to be an American. And that an inane Adam Sandler comedy of lowest-common-denominator gags could rile me up this much just makes me want to cry. It's almost ugly enough to be considered a perverse work of art.

Most of what you need to know about I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry can be gleaned from its title and trailer. After Brooklyn firefighter Larry (Kevin James) saves his buddy Chuck (Sandler) from a blaze, the latter owes the former any favor in the world, which comes in handy for the next plot point: In order to save his pension benefits, Larry needs Chuck to pretend they have a domestic partnership on the books. ("You mean like faggots?" asks Chuck, and the audience chuckles.) It's a ruse that's apparently tougher than it sounds to maintain when crabby bureaucrat Steve Buscemi comes a-snoopin', since their idea (and the director's, the screenwriters', et al.) of being gay is owning the Brokeback Mountain DVD and tubs of Crisco.

In this movie world, all men are either prancing butterflies or the gay-bashers who can't stomach them, so expect ABBA songs, soap-dropping in the shower, and other stereotypes so offensively retro that LGBT culture becomes a minstrel show. Oh, and all the firemen are threatened by new guy Ving Rhames, the only black dude at the station (who later reveals his us-or-them identity by picking up said soap and singing "I'm Every Woman"). This is not empowerment through the taking back of derisive behavior, folks — it's simply license to laugh at mean-spirited gay jokes.

Moving on to other bigotries: Chuck, prone to treating all women like bimbos (or rather, all women here are portrayed as such), is practically in existential crisis when he gets a boner for a busty lawyer (Jessica Biel, acting more Maxim cover girl than thespian), since, you know, she sees him as gay. In the throes of his own crisis, Larry can't deal with having an effeminate son who loves show tunes, Easy-Bake Ovens, and doing splits. Oh, the horror! And on and on, leading up to our protags' public almost-kiss (which is interrupted — thank goodness!) and their marital deception's unmasking in court, which inexplicably makes Chuck and Larry heroes to the gay community — by cheating the system, when so many gay couples can't get insurance benefits themselves? And lest we forget our final moral lesson, a reminder: that Canadians are understanding unlike that "uptight country to the South," a line that won applause in my screening, even coming out of the mouth of Rob Schneider in slanty-eyed yellowface — and why not throw in some slanty-eyed yellowface by this point?

So go on, pay your ten bucks and get your hate on.

— Aaron Hillis