Word: kidded
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...making the graybeard argument that every remake is a desecration of the original. (David Cronenberg's 1986 take on The Fly, to name just one, is a stand-alone masterpiece.) But it'd be nice if the 2007 Heartbreak Kid had some idea of the moral stakes involved, instead of playing everything for no-brain farce...
...gross comedies. You probably loved There's Something About Mary, where Stiller fell in love with giggly blond Cameron Diaz and won her by fighting off a platoon of suitors and surviving a slew of acute embarrassments (the zipper, the hair gel, the dog). Now here's The Heartbreak Kid, in which Stiller falls for and weds a Diaz-type blond (Malin Akerman) only to discover, on his honeymoon, he's married the Woman from Hell - and that, if only he can ditch the bitch, a more suitable mate is available. Can't-miss romantic farce, based on a famous...
...feel as if I've betrayed my disappointment with The Heartbreak Kid by making it sound vaguely amusing. The movie has its moments, like Lila's ring tone (the Wicked Witch broomstick theme from The Wizard of Oz), and Corddry's exasperated description of his secret for a happy marriage ("Sit back, relax and wait for the sweet embrace of death"). I also appreciated Eddie's flailing argument for dumping his bride for another woman. "The heart wants what it wants," he says, quoting Woody Allen's remark to Walter Isaacson of TIME during the 1992 scandal involving the filmmaker...
...Heartbreak Kid doesn't go totally wrong, its big problem is that doesn't really go anywhere. It just sort of lies there, like dumb Lila on the beach, waiting to turn gold. It wants to rekindle the Something About Mary spirit, or perhaps it hopes to twist it into an instructively acerbic fable about answered prayers. But, for all the typically Farrelly gross-out gags (beware the pubic hair scene), it hasn't the nerve either to brand Eddie as an unethical creep or salute his indefatigably amoral ambition to proceed directly from first wife to trophy wife...
...Before marrying Lila, Eddie's only reservation about her was that she lacked a sense of comedy. His father bellowed, "Funny's a male gene, idiot." Actually, that is funny, when you consider that the May-directed Heartbreak Kid has it all over the new version in humor, perspective and boffo laffs. Maybe Eddie should have hooked up with Sarah Silverman. Dad might have approved too: a nice Jewish girl...