A story of awkwardly overlapping romances liberally seasoned
with the patented, over-the-top humor of the brothers Farrelly,
The Heartbreak Kid reunites the
behind-camera comedy specialists with star Ben Stiller in a careening showcase
for serial outrageousness that favors potent commercial formula over strict
adherence to narrative through-lines.
Stiller stars as San Francisco sports store owner Eddie Cantrow, who,
after years of bachelorhood and ample pressure from his widowed father,
Doc (Jerry Stiller), and best friend Mac (Rob Corddry), starts to
wonder if he's being too picky about the women he meets. The
wedding of a former girlfriend only serves to amplify these feelings of
isolation, so when a chance encounter with an alluring blonde marine
researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) leads to the sweet bloom of
romance,
Eddie believes he's finally found true love. When the threat
of a potential job transfer for Lila endangers the relationship, he
impulsively proposes.
But as the newlyweds drive down
the California coast on the way to their honeymoon to Cabo San Lucas,
Eddie feels
familiar pangs of unease. Soon after reaching their exotic Mexican
hideaway, he's convinced he's made a terrible mistake, put off as he is
by
Lila's aggressive bedroom demeanor and a chain of kept secrets that
range from merely unnerving (a deviated septum) to jaw-tighteningly
negligent (a mountain of debt, an old drug habit).
It's here that Eddie also happens to fall for the down-to-earth Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who's visiting with her family.
Miranda
has no clue that Eddie has just married, and with Lila confined to the
honeymoon suite with a brutal case of sunburn, Eddie struggles to find
a way to extricate himself from his days-old marriage without losing
the (new) girl of his dreams. A tangled bit of misunderstanding
Leads Miranda to believe that Eddie is a widower, but when that gives
way to the truth, and Miranda returns home, Eddie sets off to try to
win her back.
While
The Heartbreak
Kid retains the Farrelly’s trademark humanistic touch (evident with the
care paid to Miranda’s country-raised family) it also doesn’t hesitate to
offend, chiefly through Lila’s sexual voraciousness, but also a wide variety of
casual brusque language and one-liners.
Notions of character consistency are hard to pin down,
though, especially since some of Lila’s sprung “surprises” are matters that would have
been sorted out, even in six weeks of virginal, whirlwind courtship. Then
there’s the contrast, too, of scenes in which Lila talks about being just like
an elderly couple in 10 years (she’s “not good at math,” she confesses), then
immediately references spending the next 40 or 50 years together.
The fact is that
The
Heartbreak Kid asks in many ways to be taken air-quote seriously as
something a bit darker and of more modern, sardonic substance than director
Elaine May and screenwriter Neil Simon’s original 1972 comedy, from Eddie’s
familial entanglements with his “would-be” in-laws to the movie’s general view
of relationships and its barbed, deliciously bleak-hearted ending. The film's wild and
crazy, blue asides, then (bits that include a shot of Lila’s hairy, pierced
pubic area, and a discussion of Carlos Mencia’s hotel concierge placing Lila’s
hand on his genitals), often arrive with the jarring force of a
less-than-well-oiled traveling theme park ride;
they’re naughty,
outside-the-lines coloring, wedged in for cheap effect. Still, the performances are almost uniformly engaging,
with Stiller cycling through a catalog of sputtering resistance ploys
that still work, no matter their familiarity.
For the full review, from Screen International, click here.
