There (really, really) is something about Mary!

Rating: Null/10 (23 September 1998)

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY stars Cameron Diaz as the alluring title character who briefly dates, and forever haunts, an awkward and somewhat withdrawn high school student (Ben Stiller) who grows up to think that he might just be man enough to settle an unresolved enterprise of the heart. He hires a private investigator (Matt Dillon) to track down the grown-up Mary and, yup, you guessed it, the investigator develops a "private eye" for the intriguing Mary and poses as an architect after he spies on her and overhears her describing her ideal man.
Adolescent bathroom humor is elevated almost to the level of high art by the screwball antics of this film. There's a gross-out zipper gag; there's a bit about a fish-hooked lip; and, for toppers, there's an incident involving the strangest "hand-made" hair-gel you ever saw. But, craftily woven through the racey, risque humor is a tender, romantic story, and a cleverly teeter-tottering, high-wire balancing act that makes us question where sentimental affectation ends and stalking begins. The comedy isn't always low brow; the film-makers sometimes betray an underlying sophisticated streak, as with their use of a recurring modern, Greek chorus (Jonathan Richman and Tommy Larkins) that becomes a running gag throughout the film. This meandering interplay, of borderline humor that includes intense physical comedy and politically incorrect jokes about handicaps and mental retardation versus the more refined touches that actually take characters' feelings into account, adds to the rising tension of the film and makes MARY a superior speciman of the Farrelly Brothers' brand of humor -- perhaps, the zenith of the DUMB AND BUMBER school (if such a seemingly-oxymoronic name for a genre can be allowed).