Hard to top...even for the Brothers Farelley!

Rating: Null/10 (11 August 2003)

I chose There's Something About Mary to be the first movie that I am going to review here on IMDb. To me, it is a near perfect comedy that ranks up there with such all time greats as Some Like It Hot and Airplane. What really makes this movie work though is the first rate acting by the cast. Cameron Diaz actuall received the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress and deservedly so.
Just catch the moment at the end when she catchers her good friend and neighbor Magda eating a banana split. Diaz does a great double take when it dawns on her that Magda has just slept with an old sailor. (Earlier in the movie, Magda tells her that after sex, she always has to have a banana split.)
Magda, played by Lynn Shaye is fantastic. Magda is supposed to be a dried oversexed leathery skinned 50-something who is way too much in love with her dog, Puffy. She even tells Mary (Diaz, duh!) that if Puffy likes a prospective suitor, then he's "a keeper." Shay here herself was at least 25 years younger than her character, but she plays her so well that most people were surprised to see that it was the make up and good acting.

Of course there's Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon leading the charge of Mary's suitors. Stiller is quite game for all that he goes through in this movie and pulls it off. Dillon, who for years was one of the most handsome guys in film, turns himself into a seedy looking...and acting private dick (and you can use that word in both its meanings here).
The movies' most famous scene is the hair gel scene. However, when I saw it for the second time in the theatre in '97, the scene that was even funier was when Puffy went Psycho on Stiller.
Indeed, this is a true comedy classic that is hard to top. So hard, that the Fareelley Brothers subsequent movies have been abysmal outings. Here, the low brow humor comes naturally out of the situation recalling the old line that it isn't in bad taste if you laugh at it.