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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the creative force behind Dumb and Dumber and Me, Myself, and Irene, found middling success with an overblown sexual farce from 1998 called There's Something About Mary that contains everything we expect from the Farrelly Brothers, including scattered laughs and a predictable ending, but it goes on way too long.
Ted (Ben Stiller) is a lonely Rhode Island writer who has never gotten over his high school sweetheart Mary (Cameron Diaz), whose date for the senior prom was derailed by a very embarrassing incident. Thirteen years later, Ted decides to hire a detective named Healy (Matt Dillon) to find Mary. Healy finds Mary in Miami, who hasn't changed a bit in thirteen years, but Healy doesn't tell Ted that, hoping to discourage Ted so that he can have Mary for himself, a mission he begins by eavesdropping on her life to learn things about her that he can use to court her attention.
The Brothers Farrelly, Ed Decter, and John J. Strauss have provided us with a rambling screenplay that starts off promisingly, with a very funny recreation of Ted and Mary in high school and the "incident" which put a kibosh on their relationship, but once the story moves to Miami, the story just works very hard to shock and offend, which is expected from the Farrelly Brothers, but two hours and ten minutes of it was definitely overkill. This movie doesn't provide laughs for the entire running time primarily due to some really uninteresting and unfunny minor characters and the expected bathroom humor and sexual smut that has become a staple of the Brothers Farrelly.
What we do have here is a very appealing central character, vividly brought to life by Cameron Diaz, in one of her most charming performances, who makes you care about what happens to her. The initial high school scenes seem to set the character up as this kind of trampy tease who drove all the boys crazy and, even if she did, it wasn't due to any manipulation on Mary's part and that doesn't really change when the story flashes forward. Despite all the over the top shenanigans here, Mary remains a very sweet yet human character who has had an effect on men throughout her life that she really doesn't use for her own purposes or is even aware about it.
Ben Stiller is fun as Ted and Matt Dillon works very hard at keeping Healy likable, but for me, the funniest of Mary's suitors was an architect named Tucker, hilariously brought to life by Lee Evans. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty annoying, especially W. Earl Brown as Mary's retarded brother, but there are laughs to be found here, though there are times you have to really mine for them.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the creative force behind Dumb and Dumber and Me, Myself, and Irene, found middling success with an overblown sexual farce from 1998 called There's Something About Mary that contains everything we expect from the Farrelly Brothers, including scattered laughs and a predictable ending, but it goes on way too long.
Ted (Ben Stiller) is a lonely Rhode Island writer who has never gotten over his high school sweetheart Mary (Cameron Diaz), whose date for the senior prom was derailed by a very embarrassing incident. Thirteen years later, Ted decides to hire a detective named Healy (Matt Dillon) to find Mary. Healy finds Mary in Miami, who hasn't changed a bit in thirteen years, but Healy doesn't tell Ted that, hoping to discourage Ted so that he can have Mary for himself, a mission he begins by eavesdropping on her life to learn things about her that he can use to court her attention.
The Brothers Farrelly, Ed Decter, and John J. Strauss have provided us with a rambling screenplay that starts off promisingly, with a very funny recreation of Ted and Mary in high school and the "incident" which put a kibosh on their relationship, but once the story moves to Miami, the story just works very hard to shock and offend, which is expected from the Farrelly Brothers, but two hours and ten minutes of it was definitely overkill. This movie doesn't provide laughs for the entire running time primarily due to some really uninteresting and unfunny minor characters and the expected bathroom humor and sexual smut that has become a staple of the Brothers Farrelly.
What we do have here is a very appealing central character, vividly brought to life by Cameron Diaz, in one of her most charming performances, who makes you care about what happens to her. The initial high school scenes seem to set the character up as this kind of trampy tease who drove all the boys crazy and, even if she did, it wasn't due to any manipulation on Mary's part and that doesn't really change when the story flashes forward. Despite all the over the top shenanigans here, Mary remains a very sweet yet human character who has had an effect on men throughout her life that she really doesn't use for her own purposes or is even aware about it.
Ben Stiller is fun as Ted and Matt Dillon works very hard at keeping Healy likable, but for me, the funniest of Mary's suitors was an architect named Tucker, hilariously brought to life by Lee Evans. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty annoying, especially W. Earl Brown as Mary's retarded brother, but there are laughs to be found here, though there are times you have to really mine for them.