I know what you’re thinking: “David, what do you mean you never saw There’s Something About Mary until last week?!” Well, you said it pretty well. I just never really had the opportunity to see the most celebrated effort of the Farelly Brothers (who wrote, directed, and produced this movie, and also worked on Me, Myself & Irene and Dumb & Dumber), and despite all the amazing buzz, and all my friends telling me to go see it, I just never got around to it. Luckily, the other night, I had a date with this guy, Don, and we wound up watching this DVD on his couch. I’ll try to tell you about it as best I can, but I was a little bit…preoccupied during parts of the movie. But you’ll have to ask Don about that. (Incidentally, I did indeed write this within a week of viewing the movie, but internet trouble has caused it to be left unposted for three weeks. Not that it affects anything; I just wanted to tell you.)

The movie opens in 1985 or thereabouts, in Rhode Island. Ted (Ben Stiller [Keeping the Faith, Meet the Parents]) is a braces-wearing high school outcast, but when he stands up for the mentally handicapped Warren (W. Earl Brown [the cameraman in Scream, Bella Mafia]), he winds up with Warren’s beautiful sister Mary (Cameron Diaz [The Mask, Charlie’s Angels]) for a prom date. Sadly, that date is not meant to come to fruition, and we now find Ted in the present, still in Rhode Island, still pining after Mary. His constant ruminations are so annoying to his best friend Dom (Chris Elliott [Get a Life, Groundhog Day]), that Dom puts Ted in touch with Pat Healy (Matt Dillon [One Night at McCool’s, In & Out]), an insurance claims investigator at his firm, to help Ted find Mary in Miami, where she moved the month after high school ended. But as soon as Healy sees Mary, he falls for her, and starts using his dubious investigative skills to insinuate himself into her life, despite the suspicions of Mary’s best friend Tucker (Lee Evans [Mouse Hunt, and a generally popular British personality]). When Ted and Dom eventually head down to Florida to find out what’s going on, what they discover is men pouring out of the woodwork and into Mary’s life. Because, you see, there’s just something about Mary.

Naturally, the key character in all this is Mary herself. Now, even though I’ll admit that Cameron Diaz is very cute, she’s not a total knock-out like Catherine Zeta-Jones or Julia Roberts. This makes one wonder why a great many guys fall for her so utterly and hopelessly, upon just meeting her once. Essentially, the viewer must take it partly on faith that there really is “something about Mary.” It’s not a huge stretch, as I do like her on-screen personality a lot. The script also goes a long way to show what a genuinely good person Mary is. She is a compassionate and skilled physician, she gives her free time to fulfilling charitable work, and she is considerate and thoughtful in her relationships with everyone she knows. She deeply loves her handicapped brother, and has consistently remained loyal to him even though it has hurt her chances with many men she has met over the years. I think Cameron Diaz fills this role very nicely, as a more attractive woman (but, again, Cameron is very cute) might have distracted the viewer from Mary’s internal beauty.

The character with the most screen time is Ted, since most of the story is from his viewpoint. Like Mary, he is a good person; he often overextends himself in his efforts to help others. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to be overtaken by outrageous circumstances that wreak havoc on his life. The funny think about Ben Stiller is that he’s really not good-looking at all. I mean, he looks almost simian and he really isn’t handsome or sexy in any way. Yet he usually plays romantic male leads. I guess it’s because he’s delightfully quirky and brings a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to his roles. As the main character, Ted is the center of most of the slapstick in this movie (which I will discuss later).

As a character, Warren was primarily a comedic device. His mental handicap leads him to assorted bizarre actions that sometimes advanced the plot and sometimes were just there for a laugh. Honestly, I felt that some of these scenes were in rather bad taste. After all, they are taking a learning-impaired individual and setting him up as a humorous freak, which is somewhat insensitive to those who really do suffer from such disabilities. Of course, this is a completely fictional character, who has no bearing on real handicapped people, so I’m not terribly concerned about it. Warren has a peculiar way of demonstrating his trust in others (or lack thereof), and this indicator is important to Mary.

Pat Healy is a totally despicable creep. As soon as he gets a look at Mary, he abandons the “mission” he was charged with, namely to locate the woman on Ted’s behalf, in order to pursue him herself. And if that weren’t bad enough, he does so by using technology that violates Mary’s privacy and is invasive in every way, completely without her knowledge. He lies to her repeatedly and extensively, and even takes criminal actions to try and cover his tracks. I would know more about this character, except that during his exposition Don started nibbling on my ears, and I got distracted.

Then, of course, there are the other assorted men that find their way into Mary’s life. Dom gets in on the action when he comes to Ted’s rescue in an unusual situation, and winds up driving Ted to Florida. Dom, incidentally, has a terrible nervous disorder that causes his face to break out in puss-filled hives whenever he is in a stressful situation. Presumably, he suffers from this affliction because the writers thought it would be funny. They were right. Chris Elliott does quite well in roles that require oddball creepiness, which it turns out this one does. Mary’s best friend Tucker is a paraplegic whose arm-stilts (damned if I know what they’re really called) supply a bit of the movie’s physical comedy. He is British, which is always good for a laugh, and he sees right through Healy’s ploys, warning Mary with startling accuracy. And let’s not forget all the men of the disability center, most of whom want to marry Mary. There’s also Mary’s next-door neighbor, and the pizza delivery guy, and her old boyfriend from high school, and even someone you might recognize, but the surprise of whose appearance I will not reveal (No dangling participles for me, no sir!)

There are a few supporting performances that merit individual mention. Mary’s roommate and confidante Magda (Lin Shaye [a very impressive number of bit roles in various movies]) is a middle-aged spitfire whose personal habits are intriguing, to say the least. I also enjoyed watching Markie Post (Well, she was one of the card-turner-over-ers on Card Sharks, and--Oh, come on, you know who she is!) as Sheila Jensen, Mary’s mother, in the opening scenes. She’s very cute, despite her fifty years, and the scenes were probably a lot of fun for her.

Not surprisingly, the main focus of this movie is the humor, with only a passing nod of acknowledgement to characterization and plot. What characterizations there are tend to be quite archetypical, and we are sort of hit over the head with them. However, because said characterizations are wisely not made part of the film’s foreground, this is really not a problem. The humor is mostly physical in nature, including lots and lots of bodily harm. For example, one incident involves the worst thing that can ever happen to a man and which involves a zipper. I knew that the incident would occur, from commercials I had seen, but I was shocked that we actually are permitted a brief glimpse of the carnage. There are other rubber-cast body parts, but I won’t deny you the anticipation.

A great deal of the humor focuses on Ted falling into all kinds of crazy shenanigans. At various points in the movie, he finds himself trapped in a car with a sociopathic hitchhiker, he gets arrested for public lewdness, a fishing hook pierces his cheek, and he is attacked by a bloodthirsty Highland Terrier. But the best scene involves some good, old-fashioned masturbation. That’s right, masturbation. That ancient joy of adolescent males. Masturbation. That tried-and-true standby of middle-aged singles. Masturbation. That guilty pleasure of men around the globe. Masturbation. That dream within a dream--no, wait, that’s marriage; never mind. But you get my point. Dom convinces that Ted that it would be a terrible idea to go out on his big date with Mary, without first “choking the chicken.” Dom explains that only after “milking the lizard” is the man’s mind clear enough for him to relate to a woman on a level with which she will be comfortable. All that “man juice” on the brain will make him come off as a sex-hungry maniac. But after “clearing the pipes,” the man beings to “act like a woman,” and the woman will love him for it. I won’t tell you what happens in the rest of the scene, as you deserve to experience it for yourselves. Instead, I will comment on Dom’s reasoning. Firstly, it is absolutely accurate. If I go too long without either having some sort of sexual contact, or else masturbating, I find myself increasingly obsessed with sex. Thus, if I know that I will be entering a situation where sexual thoughts would be unwelcome or inappropriate, I make damn sure that I have ejaculated recently. On the other hand, when I am preparing for a date, I try to refrain from ejaculatory activities for about a full week (This tells you how rarely I actually manage to find a date.). This makes me good and potent; after all, everyone knows that two gay men on a date always have sex. So, in case any women who have seen this movie were wondering: Yes, it’s true. Men really are that messed up.

There are some really funny dialogue sequences as well. For starters, there was also one line I liked a lot, near the end of the movie, that pokes fun at the unpronounceability of a certain celebrity’s name. There is also a dialogue that Healy stages within Mary’s earshot, which is just hilariously over-the-top. The actors all seem to have very good chemistry that supports their repartee quite well.

Another good part of the movie is the music. There are several interludes in the movie, during which we are sung through scene changes by a sort of street minstrel. He sings to us, predictably, that “There’s something about Mary.” Basically, they exposition a bit for us about why Ted is so hung up on her. They are also involved in a great “clincher” scene at the very end. Speaking of the end, and without giving away any plot points, there is a delightful sing-along to “Build Me Up Buttercup.” It involves the whole cast lip-synching along with the song, and even dancing a bit. We also get to see a few outtakes. The use of this old song in the montage actually led to a brief resurgence in its popularity. I found myself singing it for a few days after I saw it. The only thing that bothers me slightly is that the song doesn’t really fit the movie. This “Buttercup” person seems very cruel in the way that she toys with the affections of men and uses them for her own amusement. Mary is quite innocent of the effect she seems to have on men, and she does not “build [them] up…just to let [them] down.” Well, it’s still a good song. There were some other nice songs during several other montage sequences with no dialogue, but by then Don had my pants off, so again details are sketchy.

Well, that’s about all I have to say on this one. In essence, There’s Something About Mary is a harmless comedy flick, with a healthy dose of romance thrown in, with the whole thing elevated to an R-rating level because it let the Farrelly brothers get away with more. And once they got away with it, they ran with it. Go see this movie if you want a great laugh that you don’t have to think about too hard. Plus, you know, bodily function humor. Woo-hoo!

QF1 (For a full explanation of QF, please see my profile page.)
Well, they said the word “bisexual.” I’m not even sure if that counts.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age