Ray Pride

"I believe a man does what he can until his true destiny is revealed." The line from "The Last Samurai" rang true a few days later while watching the Farrelly brothers' latest comic contraption, "Stuck on You," in a scene where Greg Kinnear does a one-man show as Truman Capote with his conjoined twin Matt Damon dressed in black and cowering behind him, drenched in flop sweat.

Filmmakers without a track record that includes hits like "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary" would get one universal response to the plot of this mix of maudlin and mayhem: "The hell you boys talking about? You busting my chops?" Or whatever profane equivalent a modern studio executive might shout. But modern studio executives don't work by the seat of their pants--they either crunch the numbers or cross their fingers, working with genial jokers like these two brothers from Back East.

Four words sum up my reaction to the story line of "Stuck on You," when it was first announced (as a vehicle for Jim Carrey and Woody Allen), as well as during long stretches of the movie itself: "This. Should. Not. Work."

But, miracle of miracles, it's their funniest movie since "Dumb and Dumber," and its unlikely mix of slobbiness and sentiment kept me both in stitches and in tears. Simple as that.

Kinnear and Damon play Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins who run a burger joint on Martha's Vineyard, and make a great goalie in the local hockey league. Kinnear has to follow his muse, dragging Damon along to Los Angeles as he hopes to make his break as a Hollywood actor. Like the best of early 1960s Jerry Lewis, the Farrellys are willing to pummel their one joke past the point of any resistance. After a while, it's not just endurable, but adorable.

They're like David Cronenberg with "Crash" (with its congeries of car-crash-scarification fetishists), furthering their enduring fascination with disfigurement and handicap, but also examining the bonds of family and brotherhood with a metaphor than almost no one on earth will ever experience. It's like Greek dramatists dealing with gods, Shakespeare dealing with kings, and Eric Rohmer with the idle rich: these people are so unlike us, they're exactly like us, and get a load of the obstacles the authors are putting those poor saps through. It's comedy in a parallel universe, with emotions very much like our own.

Of all the critics who've gone to bat for the Farrellys, the most engaging may be Film Comment's Kent Jones who, in a piece at the release of "Shallow Hal," argued for them being the last of the great humanists. And there is a case to be made for these two being our knucklehead Jean Renoirs: The great tragedy is that everyone has their reasons, a character of Renoir's once observed, and the Farrellys might add, the great punch line is "We're all a bunch of belching boneheads!"

And when in doubt and things seem a little too touchy or feely or artsy or fartsy? Pour on the classic-rock greatest hits like you own a maple-syrup factory. There are enough pop songs to fill all sixty minutes of a Clear Channel play list.

There are jokes that are shockingly great, exploiting structure, context, intelligence, character, the best of which closes with the seeming non sequitur, "You need stamps?" I'd say there are at least a dozen perfect gags in "Stuck on You."

It's a movie about fraternal love, but there's also room for Cher, playing Cher. ("I love it when famous people turn out not to be dickwads," one of the brothers notes.) And Meryl Streep. In a musical. Based on "Bonnie and Clyde." And a "CSI" sendup that includes the line, "You know what I mean! The smegma from the dead hooker's perineum!"

It's worth returning to a conversation I once had with the brothers about bad taste and their casting of smaller roles: They may have more differently abled people in their work than any other filmmakers outside of Werner Herzog. Peter says that "Bad taste is when something doesn't get a laugh. If people laugh, we're all for it." A friend of theirs named Danny Murphy has appeared in most of their movies; you'll know him as the cranky guy in a wheelchair. "We've known him for twenty-five years. In fact, I was with him when he broke his neck," Peter told me. "Danny's always complained, 'How come every time they show a guy in a wheelchair he's a sweet good guy? He's like an angel on this earth. Why don't people realize that most people who break their necks are maniacs. You know, that's how they break their necks, on motorcycles going 110, or they're diving off cliffs. Some bad, some good, some smart-asses."

In "Stuck on You," there's a middle-aged character named Rocket (Ray "Rocket" Valliere). He has a lisp, and he's the slow guy who takes grief from strangers at the brothers' burger shop. He's got some of the movie's funniest lines. (And Valliere gets the film's last scene.) And what else do the Farrellys offer the Rockets and the Danny Murphys in their movies?

Dignity. There's something that's goddam out of place in a studio production, huh?

"Stuck on You" opens Friday.

(2003-12-10)

Also by Ray Pride

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Tip of the Week
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Tip of the Week
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The lie of the mind
(2003-11-19)

Childish things
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Short Runs
(2003-11-19)

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