The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

It’s time for Ben Stiller to hang it up. Time for him to take his smug self-deprecating smarm and pack it in, along with the pointless pratfalls, the perplexed looks, and the pre-planned pop culture references. None of it works anymore – as a matter of fact, it hasn’t functioned successfully since he was riffing on Bono and Tom Cruise as part of his failed Fox sketch comedy series. At this point in his superstar status, he’s got enough money to make himself comfortable, and even if he doesn’t, his elderly dad’s F-you cash from Seinfeld and King of Queens will make a nice inheritance. So here’s hoping this normative force in funny business gets the message and moves along. That way, we won’t have to put up with his incredibly awful antics in mindless movies like this latest Farrelly Brothers flop.

The Heartbreak Kid – though why it would want to call itself that, seeing as how it slanders the legacy left behind by the Neil Simon/Elaine May original – is a disaster, an unmitigated humorless horror that never once plays as raunchy or as outrageous as it thinks it is. Realizing that their patented gross out scheme has long been usurped by others more adept at balancing the believable with the bawdy (read: the Apatow contingent), the men behind such hit or miss concoctions as Me, Myself, and Irene, Stuck on You, and Fever Pitch have managed to make the worst film of their careers – and that’s saying a lot for the guys behind Osmosis Jones. Using extremes like excuses and shouting where a script should be, this guaranteed to please the least demanding of audiences atrocity is a perfect illustration for why Mr. Freaks and Geeks and his party posse had to step in and save cinematic comedy. Without their Superbad life support, an effort like this would have been fatal.

Our sad, superficial story starts with 40 year old idiot Eddie Cantrow (the aforementioned Stiller). Unlucky in love – or perhaps a better way to put it is that he’s so emotionally inert that he makes amoebas seem like sharp, on the ball boyfriends – and unsure if he will ever wed, he decides to give romance one more chance when he falls head over horniness for smoking blond babe Lila (a wasted turn by Malin Akerman). At first, everything is dew drops and butterfly kisses. This new gal seems spectacular, and Eddie’s married pal Mac (Rob Corddry) and sex starved Dad (Jerry Stiller) want him tying the knot. But it’s not until Lila announces a potential job relocation to Rotterdam that our hero gets up the chutzpah to go nuptial. On his honeymoon, our numbskull newlywed learns the awful truth – Lila is a menace. She’s a sexually strange ex-coke whore with a deviated septum, gaseous genitals, and the manners of a rabid sugar glider. Even worse, she’s massively in debt, hopelessly insecure, and clingy as Hell.

Fast forward five minutes or so and Eddie realizes he’s the proverbial fool who jumped in – and there’s nary a wise man in sight. All he can find is Uncle Tito (a painfully unfunny Carlos Mencia), a local Mexican concierge who has a strange habit of making inappropriate comments out of jest. Even more depressing, Eddie befriends Miranda, a sweet and wonderful belle from Mississippi who appears to be his real soulmate. While her family is suspicious of his motives, the couple eventually falls for each other. Of course, Lila is still in the picture, and she’s not about to give up her man. And if and when the skit hits the fan, there’s bound to be some outrageous post-consummation problems. All Eddie wants is a chance at happiness. Too bad he didn’t think about that before leaping into a marriage with a psycho stranger. Sadly, anyone – including those in the audience – who witness this interpersonal fiasco is fated to pay – and pay dearly.

It is nearly impossible to describe how hopelessly terrible this so-called slopstick really is. Instead of developing a few believable characters and then making them act in surreal, excessively extreme ways, the Farrellys come up with the gruesome gags first, and then try to fit them into the narrative unabated. No explanation. No motivation. No connection to anything remotely resembling reality. Such a disturbing disconnect means that the movie has to work three times harder to deliver anything close to comedy. The viewer has to get over the abject abruptness, along with the lack of identifiable humanity, before ever nearing the realm of the satiric. The Heartbreak Kid is overrun with such jarring, jumbled moments. One minute our characters are having a stereotypical “wives are shrews” conversation. The next, they are discussing the particulars of pounding p****.

Besides, the majority of the material is not new or novel. For every setpiece that pushes the overhyped envelope (Lila urinating on Eddie to kill a jellyfish sting), there are a dozen scenes of senseless sameness, times when brazen curse words are called upon, fat people are mocked, and Southerners are labeled as hot tempered rednecks. Lila’s idea of appropriateness may not be socially acceptable, but she’s far closer to the fame whore mentality of our tenuous TMZ nation than Eddie’s wide-eyed doltish optimism. The original Heartbreak Kid had a real edge to it. All the characters were craven in their self-centered and social climbing desires. Here, no one is nasty. Our hero is a lox, his new wife is a weirdo, and his proposed new honey is a slightly snarky hoot. No one is out to hurt anyone’s feelings. Instead, they want to beat around the bush as much as possible, if only to allow the filmmakers to make yet another lousy lady parts joke.

Even worse, the movie is pitched so wildly over into the doubtful dynamic that you can’t believe most of what you are seeing. Lila’s mandatory sunburn (how else can Eddie get out of the hotel to womanize) resembles the results of nuclear fallout, and her screwed up sinuses permit gallons of goo – and the occasionally piece of Carne Asada – to weep from her nostril. It’s not hilarious, it’s harrowing. Similarly, Eddie spends 45 minute mooning over Miranda. Yet as the title cards indicate the passage of time, he appears to be less obsessed and more absent minded. Without spoiling the so-called ‘surprise’, our lead does something so unconscionably dumb that one wonders how he manages the motor skills to dress himself in the morning. No one is ordinary here, and before you start bellyaching about comedy being a genre of the bizarre, there is a fine line between credible and cockamamie. The Farrellys always manage to find the divide and defecate all over it.

As for the actors, only Akerman manages to acquit herself. She tries everything short of bribery to make Lila somewhat likeable, and even with all her hissy fit phoniness, we see some heart at the center of the severity. Michelle Monaghan, on the other hand, is less than triumphant. Thinking that a cocked head and slight smirk will qualify as a third dimension, she’s rather vague as a potential cosmic paramour. Carlos Mencia should sue – or at the very least, steal every supposed snicker written for him. It’s no more racist than the routines he does on his Comedy Central showcase. And someone needs to shut the senior Stiller up right now. He can’t do crude effectively, and when he swears, it’s like the first time he’s ever heard those words, let alone spoken them aloud. But no one is worse than ol’ sonny boy. Bland Ben is Night at the Museum noxious here, almost immobile in his co called wittiness. It’s enough to make you wish for the days when he was a bad boy toy circa 1990’s Stella.

Still, like the craven Chris Tucker and the clueless Adam Sandler, the Farrellys never went broke underestimated the intelligence of their target audience. The adolescent males who will make a beeline to the Bijou the minute this movie opens will split a side chortling at every non-PC pronouncement and huff their puffing during the many hard R sex scenes. The frat boy level of laughs will strike a similar sophomoric chord, and keggers will be kinetic with talk of the classic “kitty ring” reveal. Of course, none of this makes The Heartbreak Kid artistically valid. It doesn’t even turn it into a redeemable entertainment. Instead, it’s further proof that no one does desperate and dour better than our man Ben. Here’s hoping he retires sooner than later. We don’t need his gloom and doom humor clogging up comedy anymore.