'Kid' stuff

In the Farrelly brothers' hands, 'Heartbreak' gets juvenile

By Michael Sragow | Sun Movie Critic

October 5, 2007

(C-) The new Ben Stiller vehicle The Heartbreak Kid has a killer "high concept" - a husband falls in love with another woman while still on his honeymoon. It's worked twice before, brilliantly, both in its original form as a brisk, sardonic Bruce Jay Friedman short story (called "A Change of Plan") and as an emotionally booby-trapped Elaine May movie, also called The Heartbreak Kid, from 1972.

This new version, directed by the Farrelly brothers (There's Something About Mary) and adapted by a backcourt of screenwriters from the '72 screenplay (by Neil Simon), wears out its welcome long before the kid splinters any heart, much less breaks it. The Farrelly brothers have turned a classic "squirm comedy" about the wackiness of male emotions into a conventional marital mix-up farce with just enough out-there sex to seem "cutting edge" - or at least appealing to the frat-house crowd.

It's got Ben Stiller in his relaxed, lovable, nebbish mode (I prefer him in his revved-up, Starsky & Hutch mode, looking like a constipated hamster); Rob Corddry as his already married (and enslaved) best buddy, pecked by a hen with teeth to her (their scenes are like 60-second sitcoms); and Carlos Mencia as a Mexican hotel employee with boundless joviality and crudity. In short, it has everything for devotees of the non-Stewart-Colbert wing of Comedy Central and almost nothing for followers of classic comedy.

May's movie remains a masterpiece of behavioral humor about a superficially ordinary couple falling apart shortly after their traditional Jewish wedding. It turns out the man (played by the magically unpredictable Charles Grodin) is a closet fantasist and the sloppy, clinging woman (the funny and touching Jeannie Berlin) has just one fantasy: to be married. Their newlywed trip to Miami becomes a crucible on the drive down and a calamity when they get there, and the husband meets the gentile goddess of his Americanized dreams (Cybill Shepherd) on the beach outside their hotel.

Quietly audacious, the first movie is a black comedy that traces the futility of pursuing happiness. It puts you in a state of pleasurable excruciation that doesn't end with the final scene. May keeps her characters' emotions percolating just underneath the skin, still close enough for us to see. When their impulses burst out, they're as funny as they are explosive.

The Farrelly brothers have thrived on making everything explicit, most successfully in their previous team-up with Stiller, There's Something About Mary. But when they do that with The Heartbreak Kid, the result is only mildly amusing to fans and annoying to lovers of May's movie.

The action has been regeared for gloss, likability and graphic sexual slapstick. With Stiller as the owner of a San Francisco sporting-goods store and the Mexican resort town of Cabo as his destination, this movie has the easy picturesqueness of a car commercial.

The Farrellys remove the ethnic content and make the hyper-sexual blonde the first wife (Malin Akerman) and the homey brunette (Michelle Monaghan) the object of the antihero's erotic musings. It's supposed to be daring to have the antihero ditch the hot blonde, but now the material is nothing more than an adolescent daydream. Monaghan plays a lacrosse coach from a family of sports coaches (well, one brother owns a Subway franchise). She's the kind of girl who can throw like a guy. Akerman's sole athletic arena is the bedroom, so the filmmakers exploit and mock her appetite outrageously (I still can't believe an end-credit gag involving a donkey - the second ribald donkey joke in the movie). The movie's frankness pushes the limits of an R rating, but it has a PG sensibility. The sexy girl becomes the butt of sadistic jokes.

The Farrellys and their writers pile on goofs like an intrusive mariachi band. But they spend their energy in the wrong direction. The most surprising thing about the old Heartbreak Kid is how upfront the antihero is about his new wife with his toxically playful new girl. May's movie, rooted in the angst of upward mobility, is also surprisingly sophisticated about the heartlessness of desire.

This version adds a whole other team of obnoxious characters (and a barrage of not-so-funny gags) so that Stiller's true marital status remains secret until he thinks he's won Monaghan's heart. By now the Farrellys and Stiller should know that what makes comedy honorable and electric isn't morality or affability, but the artful expression of home truths. This Heartbreak Kid makes the mistake of trying to be semi-heartwarming.

>>>The Heartbreak Kid (Paramount) Starring Ben Stiller, Malin Akerman, Jerry Stiller, Rob Corddry, Carlos Mencia. Directed by Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly. Rated R. Time 107 minutes.