Gleefully rude, politically incorrect, laugh till it hurts comedy. Any questions?

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2010)

This movie is hysterical. That's the bottom line. If you want to laugh, and don't mind severe stomach pain as a result, pop this in the DVD player and enjoy. Admittedly, it's pretty lowbrow, but when so many "comedies" fail to generate any more than a few chuckles, it's amazing to see a movie that will actually make you laugh (and laugh hard) all the way through.
After their prom night was ended too soon after an unholy disaster, Ted Strohmann (Ben Stiller) and Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz) never saw each other again. Now, thirteen years later, Ted is still pining over the woman he loved, and at the advice of a friend, hires a sleazy private investigator to look her up. Once there, he falls for her too. It's a battle of wits, wills, and bodily fluids to determine who gets the girl.
Comedy is difficult to pull off. There is so much that has to be perfect to get an honest laugh: timing, reactions, the appropriate build-up, and of course the delivery. The people making this movie certainly have what it takes. This is the best sort of comedy; it's not the lines that provoke laughs (although there are a few good one-liners), it's what happens and how it happens.
The talent pool in this movie is terrific. Cameron Diaz is dazzling as the object of every guy's affection. Mary might as well be called Mary Sunshine. She's nice to a fault, and one of those people who can change the tone of a room just by being there. Yet Diaz never lets Mary become two-dimensional. She knows what she wants, but just attracts degenerates, creeps and losers. And it's no feat to understand why every guy would go crazy around her; Diaz is also drop-dead gorgeous.
Her co-stars may be losers, but they're funny losers. Ben Stiller is a master of reaction shots, and that serves him well here. Ted is a mixture of guilt and panic, and that sets up some of the film's funniest sequences well. Matt Dillon broke into film playing teenage bad boys, but Dillon proves that he's got considerable comic talent. Lee Evans is pretty funny as Mary's friend who has a secret of his own. W. Earl Brown didn't get any accolades for his spot-on portrayal of Mary's "retarded" brother, Warren, but he's outstanding. He's funny without being insulting or a walking plot device. Also of note is Keith David, who is hysterical in the one of the film's beginning scenes.
The Farrelly Brothers are known for their low-brow, crude comedy, and that's what they give us here. This is a raunchy, occasionally dark, comedy that appeals to the lowest level of humor. And it works. There are quite a few hysterical sequences, and the inbetween parts develop a cute, if preposterous, romance. It also takes chances (a minstrel duo narrating the story? Who've thought?). A little on the long side, but it's funny all the way through. Not for kids or the tightly-wound, but it's got the one thing that every comedy needs: it's funny.