They ALL know.

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2005)

"There's Something About Mary" was the movie that broke the Farrelly Brothers, when they went from doing merely stupid gross-out movies (not that there's anything wrong with that) to intelligent, well-written gross-out movies. It was also a huge blockbuster that helped cement the careers of its two leads. It stars Ben Stiller as the everyman who's in love with Cameron Diaz as Mary, the perfect woman.
Mary represents that girl that every guy wishes he was with. The title song sung by Jonathan Richman (playing a part that recalls Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole from "Cat Ballou") says that "there's something about Mary that they don't know", implying that there's something about this girl that one guy sees but nobody else does; of course we realize by the end that that's not true, that EVERYBODY knows, whether they realize what it is about her that they are so in love with or not. Cameron Diaz plays the part perfectly. She's this perfect fox with a great personality and sunny disposition that it's easy to see any guy falling in love with.
Ben Stiller is Ted, who had an opportunity to be with Mary in high school, but screwed it up by getting his genitals stuck in his zipper in her bathroom on prom night. It's a mistake that he curses for the rest of his life, so he hires Pat Healy (played to snake-oil perfection by Matt Dillon; he was really at his best here) to go to Florida where she lives and spy on her. But Healy falls in love with her too. We find that this is an endlessly repeating theme; guys just fall in love with Mary. So Healy cons Mary into thinking he's the perfect man, while telling Ted that she's a cow who's not even worth looking up. But there's more competition waiting in the wings, including an old boyfriend named Brett.
Matt Dillon is at his best here. Ben Stiller is funny too, showing a real talent playing an average guy who keeps having bad luck dumped on him; it's similar to the type of part he would play later in "Meet the Parents". When Ted finds out that Healy was lying, he goes down to Florida to seek out Mary. But on the way he's arrested for soliciting gay sex at a rest stop, and subsequently charged with the murder committed by the hitchhiker he picked up (played by Harland Williams from "Half-Baked"), who carries the body in a large canvas bag into Ted's car, and has dreams of striking it rich by releasing a video called "7-Minute Abs", meant to take business away from the "8-Minute Abs" people. Bad break piles on top of bad break, and you can't help but feel sorry for the guy, even as you're laughing at the outlandish and terrible things that are happening to him.
This movie is a riot from start to finish. The whole cast is superb, including the smaller supporting roles (including Markie Post and Keith David as Mary's parents, Lin Shaye as Magda (she also played a supremely disgusting woman in "Kingpin"), Khandi Alexander from "Newsradio" and Sarah Silverman from "Mr. Show" and "Saturday Night Live" as Mary's friends, Chris Elliot as Ted's buddy Dom/Mary's old boyfriend Woogie, Lee Evans as Tucker/Norm, another con artist out to get Mary, and Willie Garson as one of Ted's old high school friends). And the dog is hilarious too; he actually gets two of the most memorable scenes in the movie. In the end, despite all the competition, despite the appearance (orchestrated by Ted himself, because he just wants Mary to be happy) of Brett Favre, and despite the fact that he was basically stalking her, it's Ted who gets Mary. So every man wants the perfect woman, but it's the everyman himself who gets her. It's a great ending to a great movie, almost sappy but funny enough to get away with it, much like the rest of the movie.