WATCH THE TRAILER

GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 10/5/07)

It is not particularly surprising that the Farrelly brothers' re-conception of the 1972 comedy of the same name has very little to do with the vision that screenwriter Neil Simon and director Elaine May conjured from Bruce Jay Friedman's short story A Change of Plan. May, Simon, and Friedman all made their bones in a genre that, for lack of a better term, we'll call Jewish humor (in the heyday of those artists, some preferred to call it self-hating Jewish humor), but today's Hollywood requires somewhat more deracinated content. And despite the presence of Ben Stiller, whose lineage and sensibility tradition — not to mention the presence of Ben's dad, Jerry — place him at least somewhat in May, Simon, and Friedman's tradition, Peter and Bobby insist on jettisoning many elements that made the 1972 film such an appealingly uncomfortable sit. Here the object of badly married Eddie Cantrow's new affections — which blossom in the middle of a disastrous honeymoon — isn't a shicksa goddess with an intractably waspish (in all the senses of the term) dad (the duo incarnated by Cybill Shepherd and a particularly memorable Eddie Albert). No, here Stiller's Cantrow falls for a far less loaded object, a smart, good ol' gal from Oxford, Mississippi, with a family of mostly amiable borderline cretins.

If you're getting the idea that this Heartbreak Kid is best enjoyed by people with no memory of the original, you're completely onto something. That being the case, we can go on to note that this is, as it happens, not the problem with the movie at all. No, the problem with the movie, which has a fair share of laughs courtesy of the Stillers and Rob Corddry (as a husband so thoroughly whipped he makes Paul Rudd in Knocked Up look like Paul Newman in Hud), is that it's the sourest and most borderline misogynist picture the Farrellys have yet made. The "bad" wife, Lila, portrayed with a notable and possibly commendable lack of inhibition by Swedish-born Akerman (late of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) is a bizarre concoction of touchiness and freakiness whose porn-fantasy-fulfilling qualities are weirdly singled out for condemnation by the picture. The fact that her deviated septum — a source of much gross-out gaiety — is a result of too much blow back in the day is supposed to alienate the viewer, while the fact that Stiller and Monaghan's characters can share a quiet joint on the beach while digging on each other is one reason we should root for them. I understand that marijuana is in many ways less pernicious than cocaine, but still — ought one double-deal so blatantly? I don't think so.

Along the way, the Farrellys, perhaps feeling that Judd Apatow and his posse have lapped them, throw down some new gauntlets of ickiness, some so advanced they flew right over the heads of some of my fellow audience members. A furious lovemaking session followed by some hideous gas-passing noises from Akerman's character is topped by her coy confession that she "just queefed, big time." "What?" some guy behind me asked his next-seat friend. "What's 'queefed'?" Hmmmm. I knew. I hope you do, too. The climax of such gaggery arrives just prior to the third act, with an exploding-pubic-bush shot that seemed a deliberate evocation of the Caddyshack gopher alluded to by Corddry in the movie's first scene.

I suppose that the new Kid's overall bad taste could be the result of the Farrellys trying, in their fashion, to remain true to some of the sour truths of the original — this film's ending is not as conventionally happy a wrap as you're used to getting from them. But it's the most forced ambivalent ending you'll ever see — these guys want happy, and they should have just gone for it. Nobody would have held it against them.

— Glenn Kenny