Movie review: 'The Heartbreak Kid'
Ben and Jerry Stiller turn up together in a new version of "The Heartbreak Kid," a seriously raunched-up rendition of a Neil Simon screen comedy from 1972. This "updating" is equal parts fearless — check out the way Malin Akerman hurls herself at making her character stunning and sexy and infuriating — and desperate.
Ben Stiller is Eddie, a San Francisco sporting goods store owner whose womanizing dad (Jerry) worries that his 40-year-old will be alone on Valentine's Day.
Fate intervenes and Eddie, a nice guy, meets Lila (Akerman), a Cameron Diaz look-alike who works in marine ecology and is in the process of losing her purse to a creep Eddie tries to stop.
"The Heartbreak Kid"
• HH½
• Fair
• Rated: R (strong sexual content, crude humor, language)
• Starring: Ben Stiller, Malin Akerman, Michelle Monaghan, Jerry Stiller
• Directed by: Bobby and Peter Farrelly
• Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
• Playing at: AMCG, CHES, DEST, FISH, HUDV, LYCE, MONT, ORPH, PALIS, PALTZ, PGAL, ROSV, SHOW
A few weeks of sex-free dating later, she's about to take a job in Rotterdam, Dad and Eddie's pals push him into proposing to head that off, and next thing you know the happy couple are tooling down the freeway to Cabo San Lucas for their honeymoon.
It's a long drive. They're in a Mini Cooper. Lila knows every song on the radio, from Springsteen to The Spice Girls. And she's determined to sing 'em all, stopping to swoon, from time to time, over what their "next 40 years together" are going to be like.
You can imagine what happens, just as you can imagine how Stiller plays Eddie's put-upon slow burn. You can imagine how far his eyes bug out in the hilariously explicit rough sex scenes that follow.
Little tiffs become angry arguments, culminating with a spite-induced sunburn that leaves "nice guy" Eddie free to roam the resort bar, to meet the more-to-his-liking Miranda, a down-to-earth Mississippi girls' lacrosse coach — on his honeymoon. Eddie tries to fix this fix he's gotten himself into and court the fair Miranda (cute but bland Michelle Monaghan). And thus does all the air fizz out of this balloon.
What's funniest here is watching the Grand Old Men of the New Vulgarity hunt around for the raunchy edge that they once owned by default. The Farrelly Brothers, creators of the original "What is that hair gel?" comedy, "There's Something About Mary," hang onto some of the sardonic, hypocritical wit of Simon's dark riff on male post-marital fickleness even as they overreach for comic shocks.
The Stillers score, but both father and son pale in comparison to Akerman, whose fearless turn makes her hilarious even when she's showing off every inch of her Playboy-ready bod. Still, like much of the Farrellys' work, there's no soul to what might very well be a "Something About Mary" sequel.
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