THE HEARTBREAK KID
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Paramount Pictures/ Dreamworks
Grade: C
Directed by: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farelly
Written By: Scot Armstrong, Leslie Dixon, Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Kevin Barnett, from Neil
Simon's screenplay inspired by Bruce Jay's story
Cast: Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Jerry Stiller, Malin Akerman, Rob Corddry, Carlos Mencia, Danny
McBride, Scott Wilson
Screened at: AMC 34th St., NYC, 10/6/07
Opens: October 5, 2007
Billy Wilder's 1955 movie "The Seven Year" itch delivered a comic shock to the movie-going nation. The
idea that after seven years of marriage a man would look at another woman with lustful eyes seemed
something new during the repressed decade in the century's half-way point. In our high-tech age today when an email can be sent halfway around the world from New York to Perth, such a concept would deliver unintentional laughter. Seven years? Now you have to wonder about a guy at his own wedding who does NOT cast an eye on the bridesmaids and guests. No need to wonder why the divorce rate is now 50%.
If a couple are living together before marriage, they may be on their best behavior. If not, they're in for a rude awakening. Morning breath? Your spouse chews gum and smokes cigarillos with her apple pie and coffee? Puts her hair up in curlers at night? It's enough to break one's heart. Just ask Eddie Cantrow (Ben Stiller), who takes the place that Charles Grodin’s character by the same name had in Elaine May’s 1972 version scripted by Neil Simon from Bruce Jay Friedman’s story. Stiller is zanier and more expressive than the bland Grodin, but this is not necessarily to the movie’s advantage. This re-imagining of the Neil Simon classic is raunchier, more vulgar, more simplistic, completely leaving out the subtleties of social class and ethnicity that formed the backbone of the ‘72 version, but then again, the Farrelly brothers are not genetically related to anyone in the Ismail Merchant or James Ivory. Subtlety is out. Sex and mean-spiritedness are in. Laughs are few and far-between, while some scenes might embarrass a sailor.
Changing the locale from New Yorkers who marry and take their honeymoon in Florida, the Farrelly brothers’ comedy, written by five scripters, opens in San Francisco where Eddie owns a large sporting goods store. At the age of 40 he is pressured by his foul-mouthed dad, Doc (Jerry Stiller, who is Ben’s real-life pop), to get married, and asks him regularly about his ‘pussy-crushing” activities. (The older Stiller is not the only unfunny character in this pic.) When he meets-cute a gorgeous blond, Lila (Marlin Akerman), who refuses to sleep with him because that “ruins relationships” (she turns out to be on target there, but too late), they marry after a whirlwind courtship. He soon finds her difficult to handle. She’s a tiger in bed. He can’t really keep up to her demands and complains of back problems. She refuses sunscreen lotion, and winds up with a horrendous burn. She sings passionately to every song on the radio, bobbing her head in the car like a perpetual-motion windup toy. When Eddie meets the classier, more sports-minded Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) on the beach of Mexico’s Los Cabos, he is entranced and somehow forgets to tell her that he’s on her honeymoon.
“The Heartbreak Kid” has unfortunate repetitions–the Mariachi players, who come across like a Mexican minstrel show, the unfortunate re-introduction of Jerry Stiller’s Doc with his moronically adolescent mouth. Ben Stiller is not at his best as the guy who after forty years of single status rushes into marriage only to get the itch--not seven years later but during his honeymoon. Charles Grodin would not have succeeded in a Farrelly brothers’ picture, and Stiller would not fit in with the Elaine May take on the story. But for an audience that would find the ‘72 version too subtle, the Farrellys fill the bill.
Rated R. 115 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Edited 10/6/07 by harveykarten
Edited 10/6/07 by harveykarten | 
