Raunchy and funny.

Rating: 7/10 (26 October 2007)

There are these three guys out after Mary (Cameron Diaz), or maybe four or five or six, depending on how you count. The most important are, first, Ben Stiller, the shy nobody who has had a crush on her since high school in Providence, Rhode Island. Years later he learns Mary lives in Florida, and Stiller hires a sly and self-promoting private investigator (Matt Dillon) to track her down and bring back a report. Then there is a faux Englishman (Lee Evans) trying to insinuate himself into Mary's life space by posing as a victim of polio or something. Even more devious in his obsession is Stiller's friend Woogie, crippled by a nervous rash. A football player is tossed in at the end, and an older guy who has been cultivating Mary's neighbor in order to get a crack at Mary.
It's understandable. When Dillon brings back his intelligence on Diaz, he tells Stiller that she weighs several hundred pounds, is confined to a wheelchair, has had four illegitimate children, and lives in a housing project. But the fact is Cameron Diaz is radiant. She's tall, slender, a little goofy, morally upright, and a doctor to boot.
The movie is anything but politically correct or delicate in any way. The writers have dived head first into the energetic gags, which follow one another almost instantly and range from silly (the masturbation scene) to merely reckless. (Dillon learns that Mary finds pearly white teeth sexy so he has his teeth modified, giving him a toothpaste-ad grin and a slight lisp.) I don't know how much I want to get into this because, inasmuch as the movie is a series of jokes, any description of unfolding events or character will give some of the jokes away. Well, let me say at least that I laughed most at the scene in which Matt Dillon has tranquilized Diaz's little dog so that it doesn't reject him on their first meeting. The problem is that the dog ODs and goes into cardiac arrest. With Diaz out of the room momentarily, Dillon is forced to perform CPR on the dog. When that doesn't work he yanks some electrical cords out of a lamp and tries to revive the animal with electric shock. The dog begins to sputter with sparks and his fur catches fire. I'll leave it at that.
Comedies about "romance" generally call for a sobering statement at the end, in which all is explained and the moral spelled out for the viewer. The Farrelly brothers have included such a scene but it's mercifully brief. "They were only after you because you made them feel good about themselves." You'll hardly notice the pain.
You know how some comedies are toned down, subtle, and require attention to be fully appreciated? This is the opposite.