- Photos:
-
- Running time:
- 118 minutes
- Rated:
- R
- Cast:
- Ben Stiller -
- Eddie
- Michelle Monaghan -
- Miranda
- Jerry Stiller -
- Doc
- Malin Akerman -
- Lila
- Carlos Mencia -
- Uncle Tito
(1 rating)
1 star (out of four)
Ever since “There’s Something About Mary” Ben Stiller has been getting caught in one zipper after another, metaphorically if not literally, to his mortification and our diversion. He is the screen’s reigning indignity magnet. But Stiller has suffered no greater indignity than the Farrelly brothers’ remake of “The Heartbreak Kid,” which bears only a passing resemblance to the 1972 Elaine May film and its remarkably unshticky Neil Simon screenplay, and to the perfect little six-page story from whence it came, the one by Bruce Jay Friedman beginning with the sentence: “And so finally, after four years of drift, they had found all exits barricaded and gotten married in a sudden spurt, bombing their parents with the news.”
What do we see in this excruciating new version? We see all traces of cultural and ethnic personality erased, all the old Jew/WASP comic dynamics replaced by generic trash talk. We see the protagonist urinated upon by his bikini-bottomless blond-gorgon bride after a jellyfish encounter. We sense Stiller overselling every little half-sentence and awkward fill because he’s a smart man regarding comedy, and he must know that this grating screenplay, by five credited writers, is a sinking ship.
In ’72, the honeymooner played by Charles Grodin dumped Jeannie Berlin (director May’s daughter, and satiric nice-shrewish-girl-turned-nightmare personified) for the opaque Minnesota beauty played by Cybill Shepherd. The whole film was a deadpan fever dream of shiksa-chasing, in what Friedman called the land of “strange blond people.”
The remake has Stiller as a San Francisco sporting goods store owner marrying a bland but pretty blond (Malin Akerman), urged on by his wife-whipped pal (Rob Corddry) and his horndog pop (Jerry Stiller in a dully salacious role). Our hero discovers on his Cabo San Lucas honeymoon that his wife is actually a debt-ridden recovering cokehead with a flatulence problem, a humorlessness problem and a deviated septum. Along comes Michelle Monaghan as a nice Mississippi woman to throw him for a loop.
Monaghan’s comic timing saves this go-nowhere affair from 100 percent lousiness, and I couldn’t really tell you why; she doesn’t earn any laughs, exactly; there are none, but she’s charming and she makes tiny bits of a stuporous flop slightly less grim. Slightly.
SHOWTIME LISTINGS
Movie theaters and showtimes for The Heartbreak Kid in Chicago.
