One of those comedies where you groan or cringe as much as you laugh. But such laughs!!

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2010)

There's Something About Mary (1998)
A goofy, mixed bag of a film, but with a few gut-ripping hilarious scenes that you can't miss. You have to like silly stuff. You have to put up with some padding here and there (I don't recommend the longer version unless you are already love the movie). And you have to turn a blind eye to political correctness (it has none, though not like Borat, which feeds off it, more just incidentally).
Ben Stiller is great in his own way, lovable and dull at the same time, which is the idea. The other supporting male actors are comic regulars, and not my favorites, but they do what this kind of movie needs them to do. Even Bret Favre is as stiff on camera and as beefy as a quarterback is supposed to be.
But there is, naturally, something about Cameron Diaz, that clicks with audiences--her cute, perky charm, most of all. That fact that all these guys like her for her looks is not the most enlightened approach to love, is it? But then, this isn't a high brow movie, or one with scruples in particular. It's a pretty clumsy movie, in many ways, just a series of gags that sometimes are just too funny for words. "Sometimes" being more often than a lot of other comedies.