Toilet Humor

Rating: 3/10 (28 December 2004)

This film can be summed up in two words: toilet humor. It's really strange to see the same Ben Stiller of "The Ben Stiller Show" doing dumber and dumber comedies, and it seems my wife keeps dragging me to see them. In that movie he made with Jennifer Anniston, there was a lot of bowel and toilet gags. Okay. Fair enough. But in THIS movie, barely a year later, we see a dog flushed down the toilet by a cat, and we hear Dustin Hoffman utter the words "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down." Not to mention Robert DeNiro talking about making "number one" and "number two." So this lightweight comedy starts in the toilet and never gets far from it. A highlight? Barbara Streisand. Her performance is actually quite good and natural; she may have a future in sophomoric comedy like this. She lit up the screen. Robert DeNiro, however, looked like he knew how stupid this movie was and wasn't crazy about being there.
Grade: C-.
Fun things to watch for: statue with huge phallus, Ben Stiller's one-note performance, busty housekeeper.