Have you seen my baseball?
The Farrelly brothers default filmmaking mode is gross-out humor, and that’s unmistakably on display in their biggest hit, There’s Something About Mary from 1998, for better and worse. (The balance between “better” and “worse” will depend quite a bit on individual taste, but I find it to be a pretty even split here). Certainly many of the movie’s disgusting slapstick gags are creative, memorable, and iconic. The semen hair gel is the most famous example, but Ben Stiller’s battle with a drugged-up dog is the funniest.
But there’s something else important about this movie that’s probably its second most striking trait beyond the shock-humor slapstick: It’s over two hours long! Two fucking hours, man, for a goddamn gross-out frat boy comedy. Talk about exhausting and padded.
And yet…
I find There’s Something About Mary to be kind charming. Admirable, even.
Look past the wacky gags and set pieces, and this movie is an incisive satire of romantic comedy tropes. Mary is a perfect dream girl but also just one of the guys — the kind of attainable Hollywood blonde bombshell that rom-coms traffic in for the sake of making schlubs like Ben Stiller happy, but don’t exist in real life, at least not in this form. Her real flaw is that she falls for any guy with whom she shares a superficial connection, perhaps driven by coincidences like shared favorite movies and “meet-cutes.”
It’s the guys who come off worse. There’s Something About Mary ratchets every toxic so-called “romantic” element of romantic comedies to a horrifying 11: Stalker behavior, refusal to accept “no” for an answer, dreaming about long-lost small connections, sticking to dumb lies beyond their breaking point. Stuff that’s supposed to be “charming” in a romcom, but curdled into nastiness here. It warps every male character into a crusty, slimy piece of crap, to the point that it ruins the protagonist we are actually supposed to root for, who embodies those traits in a way that we’d normally see as wholsome.
On paper, this is really quite clever. In practice, it means we spend a lot of time with awful, miserable people, and we want Mary to join a convent to avoid the creeps she attracts.
Worst of all, the movie actually tries to pull out of its thematic, satiric tailspin into a legitimate romantic comedy, so that it’s tough to take the movie seriously when Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz share romantic moments the film intends to be genuine.
And in spite of all that, I still think the movie works. It’s more than the sum of its parts: not quite a boneheaded comedy, not quite a romcom, not quite a parody. Its own unique thing.
Despite all its flaws, there’s a pleasing flow and narrative thrust to the movie. It demonstrates a deeper cinematic sweep than, say, Dumb and Dumber, which is unabashedly a joke vehicle (and which, to be clear, I deeply love). And if There’s Something About Mary doesn’t stick the landing on every aspect of its ambition, it sure as hell tries.
The film has a sense that the Farrelies poured every grand and silly idea they had into the movie. It’s filled with clever little twists and flourishes, like a troubadour that follows the story around, adding to a sense of gravity and destiny to what we’re watching. Plus, it has one of the best credits sequences in movie history: Clips of characters singing along to “Build Me Up Buttercup” from various scenes of the movie. It’s so sweet and lovely it almost almost convinces me I love the movie more than I actually do as it wraps.
It’s also hard to deny that the cast, overstuffed with talented comedians and “no way, him/her?” cameos, delivers. Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller have sufficient charisma and comedy chops to carry the movie. Matt Dillon inhabits his sleazebag character (I actually blame this movie for ruining Dillon in any other film I watch that he appears in). Chris Elliot is perfect as a gross goon. Brett Favre is here, dating back to when he was one of the five most famous athletes on the planet, because why not? And there are so many other funny little turns, which all help build out the movie’s comedic sprawl. When it’s said and done, the too-long journey’s weird twists and turns complete, There’s Something About Mary is ultimately a very fun film, and nearly a great one.
- Review Series: 2009 Top 100
Is It Good?
Very Good (6/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.