Say It Isn't So

10 April 2012

The "money shot" in this Farrelly Brothers farrago, directed by one of their payroll functionaries, comes with Chris Klein, a dog catcher in some Midwest flyspeck, somehow getting his arm stuck up a cow's anus.

The circus vet who once complained of similar indignities was told he could always leave: "What, quit showbiz?" was his answer.

A film like this counts as moviebiz in much the same way; but not so that many of us who aren't kids will care. And since the semen-as-hair-gel gag in There's Something About Mary, maybe the kids are already too mature for more of the same: bosomy, sluttish waitresses with hardware attached to nipple rings, pigeon droppings, amputees on roller skates, stroke victims croaking expletives through throat mikes and loony take-offs of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I pity the dumb creatures, and I don't mean the cast of Klein, Heather Graham, Orlando Jones and Sally Field. They knew what they were stepping into: the animals instinctively seek their own species' smellier parts.

The "plot" (and the title) comes from orphan Klein's Candide-like shock-horror discovery that the girl whose bones he's just jumped may well be his sister. But it hasn't even the courage of its own incestuous innuendos.

God knows, when American movies so often feature the US as the destination of choice for intelligent life from other planets, you wonder if the aliens ever find what they consider intelligent life on getting there. Discuss (but not too long).

Say It Isn't So

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