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Review: 'Stuck' surprisingly warm
« on: Dec 15th, 2003, 12:17pm » |
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Review: 'Stuck' surprisingly warm
Farrelly brothers go for the heart ... usually
By Anthony Breznican
Associated Press
Friday, December 12, 2003 Posted: 10:10 AM EST (1510 GMT)
(AP) -- As the Lionel Richie song of the same name suggests, "Stuck on You" shows that the Farrelly brothers have a feeling down deep in their souls that they just can't lose.
That feeling is sentimentality, which is not necessarily a bad thing -- but not what fans have come to expect from the makers of such crude comedies as "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb & Dumber."
"Stuck on You" stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins connected at the hip. Yes, in real life Kinnear is 40 and Damon is 33 -- but (the movie tells us) Damon's character got the majority of some organs, so Kinnear's character ages faster.
It might have been easier to craft a bitter comedy about conjoined twins who really hate each other and fight all the time, but the Farrellys -- Bobby and Peter -- go for the heart instead, possibly sacrificing some jokes along the way.
The main gag is that Bo and Walt (Damon and Kinnear, respectively) have difficulty seeing their situation as unusual. When Walt decides to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood as a TV actor, Bo warns him that casting directors will laugh him off the stage.
"Why?" Walt asks.
Bo waves his hand as if it's obvious. "Look at you ... You're pale as a ghost! We need to get you to a tanning salon!"
There's a lot of this kind of deadpan obliviousness. Maybe too much. "Stuck on You" is much funnier when it doesn't try so hard and just sticks to the basics, like when Walt performs a "one-man" play about Truman Capote, and Bo -- who has terrible stage fright -- stands astride him cowering and sweating like a garden sprinkler.
Of course there will be a scene where an ugly meanie teases the brothers and calls them freaks, and the brothers will use teamwork to defeat and embarrass him. This has been done to death and isn't funny or heartwarming.
Luckily, there's a lot about "Stuck on You" that is genuinely funny, but there are very few scenes that build and build and build on themselves (like the dog scene in "Mary" or the first major flip-out of Jim Carrey in "Me, Myself and Irene"). Most of the jokes come and go, getting a laugh but not wracking the audience the way previous Farrelly brothers movies have.
Damon and Kinnear add goofy realism to these unlikely characters. When they go skipping off together in the snow, overjoyed about their upcoming trip to Hollywood, it's easy to smile at their likeability and happiness. And there's at least one touching scene with Walt when he considers what life would be like without his other half.
That said, look for fun supporting roles from Cher and Meryl Streep playing satiric versions of themselves along Bo and Walt's path to celebrity. Streep is mostly a straightwoman for other jokes, but give her credit for some really bad dancing in the movie's closing scene.
"Stuck on You" doesn't have the edge of the Farrellys' other movies, and many will miss that. But between the gags, the Farrellys seem to want to say something about the love between brothers: You're stuck with the siblings you have, and you can never escape that.
This is the ultimate embodiment of that relationship, and it's nice to see two very different brothers find common ground --regardless of their situation.
"Stuck on You," a Twentieth Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 for sexual humor and profanity.
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