A blatant attempt to recapture some of the magic of There´s Something About Mary, the Farrelly Bros.’ The Heartbreak Kid provides plenty of laughs but none of the heart of the earlier film: ultimately, this is a disarmingly cruel and narcissistic picture.
It´s hard to identify with or care about a leading man who flirts with another woman on his honeymoon, or a female character the filmmakers attempt to make so unlikable that we can accept the leading man´s actions.
When the inevitable gross-out gags come, we have a different reaction here than we would if we had some emotional involvement with the characters. But the film is still amusing, even hilarious at times.
Backhand compliment: this is the Farrelly Bros. funniest feature in 10 years, since they reached their pinnacle with Mary.
Remake of the 1972 feature directed by Elaine May from a Neil Simon script, pic keeps the general plot outline the same despite an injection of five (credited) new screenwriters.
Eddie Cantrow (Ben Stiller) meets Lila, the girl of his dreams with the David Bowie panties; soon they´re married and headed to a Mexican honeymoon.
But she´s not the ideal woman he thought she was, as unfortunate misunderstandings – far too many for the film to retain credibility – immediately begin to come to light.
After a bad sunburn leaves Lila stuck in the hotel room for much of the honeymoon, Lenny begins to flirt with Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) who may really be the girl of his dreams, and the audience waits for everything to blow up in his face in spectacular fashion.
Stiller is a unique actor – we take a perverse pleasure in the physical violence directed at him and the emotional stress he builds up – and he´s terrific here, pratfalling his way through peppers up the nose, jellyfish bites, and mountains of lies with a dogged resolution.
But the Three´s Company-type situations (massive misunderstandings dragged out through lengthy dialogue) get to be too much; the interrogation scene in Mary was an out-and-out classic, but it was an isolated incident – here, similar scenes form the bulk of the movie (particularly, Lenny´s two relationships) and only distance us from these clueless characters the script desperately wants us to care about.
