Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, July 15, 1998
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Something worth seeing
MOVIE REVIEWS
As a worried Mary (Cameron Diaz) looks on, Ted (Ben Stiller) is carried to an ambulance after an accident involving his "family jewels" in the Twentieth Century Fox movie There's Something About Mary. Contributed Photo
Nothing's sacred in Mary; movie seems tasteless
By Jeremy M. Doherty Kansan movie critic
If nothing else, There's Something About Mary, the latest from filmmaking brothers Peter Farrely and Bobby Farrelly, will contribute to a gigantic boost in sales of button-fly pants.
Early on, Ted (Ben Stiller) manages to get his manhood caught in his zipper during a hurried pit stop at the house of his prom date, Mary (Cameron Diaz). While Ted convulses in agonizing, humiliating pain, Mary's mother decides that her daughter's suitor needs just a good shot of antibacterial spray.
But the Brothers Farrell don't let our hero Ted off so easily, and the entire movie is something like a catalog of worst-case scenarios. Viewers who have seen the brothers' earlier gross-out epics, *Dumb and Dumber* and *Kingpin*, know that poor Ted will suffer many more indignities before receiving any peace.
In these days of audience-friendly comedies, the Farrellys embrace toilet humor and groin jokes with a chutzpah reminiscent of the early Zucker comedies or the better Kids in the Hall sketches.
Their motto appears to be, "If it offends anybody, it's funny."
Does it offend? Sure, especially if you're someone who blanches at comedy that takes a what-the-hey approach to animal abuse, the mentally disabled and masturbation.
from his member, the Farrellys skip ahead 13 years, where the protagonist still is unable to shake his fixation on Mary. Based on the advice of his cheerful, wife-dominating buddy (Chris Elliott), Ted hires private eye Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) to hunt down his former dream girl.
Pat does find Mary, who's working as an orthopedic surgeon in Florida. However, Pat falls for her and tells Ted that Mary has put on a couple of hundred pounds and has a few illegitimate kids.
Following Ted's near-separation
But Ted cannot shake Mary's spell on his heart and sets off on an odyssey involving sexual solicitation, hard-nosed cops and canine shock therapy.
Meet results
Once it gets past the racier elements, There's Something About Mary emerges as a fairly good-natured romp about pursuing one's true love.
Kansan Rating: *** out of **** Running time: 2 hours Rated: R for strong comic sexual content and language
Stiller, whose hit-and-miss outings as a director have tended to mask his sharp comic talents, makes a likable doofus out of the sad sack Ted. When his quest for Mary's hand evolves into a blatantly absurd five-way competition, it's easy to root for him. The weak link here is Dillon, a competent dramatic actor who has no chops for this material.
There's Something About Mary isn't going to cure heart disease, and it probably will incite a few heart attacks among the more buttoned-down audiences members. For the rest of us, it's a keeper.
Lethal Weapon shot without developed plot, characters
Kansan movie critic
By Jeromy M. Doherty
At this rate, audiences should start worrying about the quality of the upcoming fourth chapter in the Star Wars series.
The Hollywood folks lately seem incapable of delivering decent fourth installments. Batman & Robin was a visual eyeres掩 quearing as comic book fun, and sloppy production railroaded last fall's Alien Resurrection.
Director Richard Donner has handed us Lethal Weapon 4, a badly acted sitcom that bears little resemblance to the classic cop thriller from 1987. Given the six-year hiatus separating this misfire and the third movie, die-hard fans of detectives Riggs and Murtaugh are in for an incredible disappointment.
The bulk of the problem lies with stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover who look too old to be firing guns and chasing bad guys. The appeal of the Lethal series has been the mismatched pairing of the
characters: psychotic war vet Riggs and family-man Murtaugh. That unpredictability, not found in this entry, is sorely missed.
The plot, such as it is, concerns a group of Asian gangsters who are smuggling slave labor into the United States from China. Their leader (Hong Kong action star Jet Li) is using them to mint counterfeit money, which he will use to buy some criminal colleagues out of captivity.
But our heroes, accompanied by the increasingly annoying Joe Pesci, catch on to the bad guys, and director Donner proceeds with the usual car chases and shootouts. Most of this does not matter. For unknown reasons, Donner and writer Channing Gibson focus on weak comedy routines and touchy-feely, emotional scenes.
Riggs is struggling with whether he should marry his cop girlfriend (Rene Russo). The suicidal cop who once put a gun in his mouth while watching Bugs Bunny cartoons no longer exists. He has been replaced by Mel Gibson, who just churns out another
LETHAL WEAPON 4
**Kansan Rating:** * out of ****
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Rated: R for violence and language
of his matinee-idol star turns.
On a another note, the guy in the director's seat appears to have gone xenophobic in his depiction of Asians. In this movie, they either serve as cardboard villains or walking punch lines. Gibson himself freely tosses out the word gook. Is this supposed to be entertaining?
The exception in this mess is Li, whose neck-snapping gangster is the best villain the series has had since Gary Busey from the first movie. Unfortunately for him, the Lethal movies stopped focusing on character and storytelling a long time ago. In their eagerness to make a quick buck (the movie wrapped filming this past May), Donner and his crew have made an incoherent train-wreck of a movie.
Let's hope George Lucas is paying attention.
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