By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to The Farrelly Brothers’ dial-shifting 1998 comedy smash There’s Something About Mary, starring Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, and Lee Evans.
“Comedy masters” The Farrelly Brothers burst into the mainstream with this enormous 1998 hit, which many people have said pushed the boundaries of comedy to breaking point. Who could forget the sperm/hair incident, or the scrotum/zipper incident, or even the dog/body-cast incident? Yes, it’s all outrageous, but a good comedy shouldn’t simply shock the audience. Call me old fashioned, but a comedy should make you laugh out loud, and often. On this front, There’s Something About Mary is a big failure.
Ben Stiller, the most one-dimensional actor in Hollywood, plays Ted, the exact same character that he’s played ever since, and still does to this day. It wasn’t even that funny in the first place, though the box office inexplicably suggests otherwise. Yes, Cameron Diaz is beautiful but, like Stiller, there is an annoying quality about her that has lingered since her career began. It could be the giggly LA princess demeanour, or maybe it’s just the over-the-top manner in which she plays all her characters.
I could go on all day about the woeful actors in this rubbish, including Matt Dillon and the ridiculously bothersome Lee Evans (a more unfunny and overrated comic you will never find…thankfully, his tilt at film stardom looks to be over), but the truth is that all roads lead back to those dastardly Farrelly Brothers. It’s their script, their direction, and their so-called jokes. Thanks to them, it suddenly became fashionable to laugh at those with intellectual disability, the elderly, skin conditions, and pizza delivery boys. It’s all just a bit…easy.
Is there anything wrong with wanting a bit more from a major, hugely popular movie? There’s Something About Mary is like a bad stand-up comedy act set to a tawdry narrative. It espouses the very lowest and basest type of humour there is and I, for one, don’t see any merit in that at all. There’s Something About Mary is certainly not a forgettable film…but funny? It’s about as funny as getting your scrotum caught in your zipper. Damn, now I’m doing it.
