Dirs. Bobby and Peter Farrelly, US, 2007, 115 mins
Cast: Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Jerry Stiller
Review by Matthew Rodgers
This won’t be the only review to note that the new Farrelly brothers comedy is best surmised as “There’s Something About Polly” as it is simply an amalgamation of the duos and star Ben Stiller’s greatest hits. Expect this and you will be greeted with a sometimes hilarious rom-com that is caked in the director’s penchant for cuteness disguised as crudity; seek anything else in this seen-it-all-before tale of fidelity and you will be disappointed.
Eddie Cantro (Stiller) is a forty-something singleton struggling in a world of expected nuptials and missed opportunities – he dumped his dream girl of five years for no justifiable reason and is hounded by friends and father (Jerry Stiller) to settle down before life passes him by. That is until a barely chivalrous act leads to a whirlwind romance with the stunning, and seemingly perfect Lila (Akerman) who only reveals her true colours – a bubbling case of sunstroke red and a sandwich short of a picnic – when the couple are on honeymoon. Cue slapstick sequences echoing classical comedy farce, each of varying success as Eddie stumbles from set-piece (good - the in-car screechy sing-along) to set-piece (bad – the jellyfish attack) on the honeymoon from hell.
The most remarkable thing about The Heartbreak Kid is how unremarkable it actually is. Bobby and Peter Farrelly return to something resembling form after Fever Pitch and Stuck On You with the winning formula that set a standard all them years back with Mary and Dumb and Dumber, but comedy has moved on since then with audiences needing some believability with their belly-laugh,s as seen in the recent Superbad, but the Farrelly’s are willing to push neither boundary too far and end up with an underwhelming in-between.
Stiller does “loveable angry little man” as only he can and the loony-bin Lila is fantastically embodied by Akerman, but Michelle Monaghan doesn’t fare so well and is completely wasted as the object of Eddie’s affections. As long as you take your brain out in the foyer and embrace the ridiculous narrative twists you have the dictionary definition Friday night date-movie, and a good one at that.
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