Silly gross-out humor

Rating: 3/10 (20 September 2001)

While not always averse to crude humor, although I usually would rather see it on a limited scale (Blazing Saddles is an exception), excesses and stupidity mean gross-out humor. And they also make a movie silly and sophomoric. And this idiotic movie about sophomoric-type people is not funny most of the time.
For the romance, we have Mary (Cameron Diaz, attractive, not beautiful, in my book) pursued by numerous love interests, and finally won over by a loser/schmuck. And was he ever. My girlfriend asked me whether women, too, should be entitled to some appealing good looks and other things, you know, Cary Grant, Tom Cruise, whoever. But I guess it was part of the humor, loser humor. Cameron Diaz in this movie is pretty with a girl-next-door look, but not sexy, like she can appear in photos and other movies. Her acting job, however, was better than that of any of the main men. Aside from the dumb scenes, the movie drags at times, particularly at the finish, when I wanted the movie just to get it over with and end, end, end.
Why did TV Guide name the gel scene one of the top 50 of all time? It is one of the (narrower number) most idiotic of all time, and yet it still would have acquitted itself a little better if it were shorter and not pompously drawn out. But it should be emphasized that almost all the crude scenes lacked the subtlety of When Harry Met Sally and The Truth About Cats and Dogs, and of Mel Brooks, who knows how to make crude humor funny. And the stuff in There's Something About Mary does not have the humor of slapstick, which I love. It is, look at me, how idiotically silly, rather than klutzy, I am. Little intelligence or wit went in. This movie is vastly overrated, and only for people with bad taste and infantile dispositions.