Heartbreak Kid

The Heartbreak Kid is as creepy, loud and unpleasant as Christmas dinner at my sister's house. Actually, I haven't seen anything this creepy since that police report in the local paper about the pervert who had been seen jerking off on parking meters in Olde Town. Unlike this movie, though, that story had a happy ending. That is, it was me, and I wasn't jerking off, I was urinating, and I never got caught. Besides, there's something romantic about being called the "Meter Peter Bandit." Nothing so swell happens in this wet fart of a timekiller. In fact, I would have rather had two hours taken off the end of my life than sit through this piece of shit.

I saw this latest Farrelly Brothers bowl-spinner at the Olde Town Cinema, which is under new ownership. The new owners are named Kerasotes, which sounds more like a company that does bulk cremations than shows movies. To their credit, they are dedicated to ensuring you can show up at the Olde Town and always get a ticket. They have done a fantastic job of keeping the floors just sticky enough to pull your shoe off your foot once a night, the seat hinges are broken just enough so you;re always fighting not to slide off, the employees are just surly and slow enough to piss off most people and the carpets are just dingy and stained enough to keep people from noticing they also smell bad.

On opening weekend at eight p.m., there were five of us in the theater for The Heartbreak Kid. I like to think it's because of the Kerasotes dedication to personalized service, but I wonder if everyone else had already been scared away, like that time the city posted a warning about brain-eating parasites in Arbor Lake but nobody told me. At first, I thought I was just lucky to have the lake to myself. After a little while, I thought I was lucky, and also could fly. By the time the paramedics I was told there was white pus coming from my nose. Nobody rescued me last night, though.

This movie is a remake of a decent 70s movie of the same name starring Charles Grodin. In it, a man on his honeymoon meets the girl of his dreams and tries to weasel his way out of his new marriage so he can pork the new paramour. It was a sort of greasy thing to do, but this was the free-swinging 70s after all. The new Ben Stiller version follows the same basic premise, but it makes Stiller more annoying and slimier, and is amped up by volume and gross-out humor as tired and busted as the average Baja Buggy.

Stiller is miscast as a cool sports-store owner who has been unable to pull the trigger on his relationships. He has a father, played by his real pops, with the thankless role of providing all the comic relief a foul-mouthed senior citizen can provide. What's so fucking funny about an old guy whose a prick who relentlessly talks about "pussy crushing"? Well, when it's me in 40 years, I hope a lot. But Jerry Stiller ain't funny at all here. He's just creepy, old and passing gas. Anyway, it's clear early in the movie that Ben Stiller is trying to play a more laidback character; a guy who drives a Mini and teaches kids how to play baseball. Quickly, though, he is right back to the high-strung, whiny ass schtick he does in every movie. We're expected to sympathize with him for what he has to put up with, yet he goes to such lengths to complain it's damn near impossible.

Worse, we're stuck with him for a grueling, overlong two hours and it turns out he's not only whiny, he's a complete asshole. I never got a sense he was this great catch who good-looking woman couldn't resist, yet he keeps getting them. The movie also portrays him as an obsessive-compulsive liar and serial cheat. What the fuck are we rooting for here? Why the hell do I want a short, slightly-hunched prick to keep getting the girls? Look Farrelly fuckers: where I come from there's a serious shortage of hot women. So, we don't get too amused when the pricks get more than their fair share.

Malin Ackerman plays Stiller's first wife, the one he dumps. She's supposed to be all sweetness and light until the honeymoon starts. Then she's supposed to turn into a monster bitch: she sings along in the car, she talks dirty and likes rough sex, she queefs and gets a terrible sunburn. Where I come from--which is Earth--dirty-talking ladies are more prized than oil, diamonds and mid-century taboo porn. And queefs aren't disgusting to a man; they are nature's way of letting the him know he did his job. Anyway, Ackerman's character is so obnoxiously over-the-top that it suggests the fuckers who wrote and made this movie are afraid of actual women. They can't relate to a woman, so they just crank up the volume on things they think women aren't supposed to do.

Michele Monaghan plays the woman who wins Stiller's heart. Here's what we know about her: She's from Mississippi but doesn't have an accent. Stiller points that out, yet the movie never bothers to explain it. My guess is, they hired her and it turns out her accent sucked a donkey's big red dick, so she just talks normal. There is nothing about her that would suggest she is meant for Stiller. Even after he decides she's the girl for him, she still never lets the audience in on what makes her so special. Part of the problem is that Stiller's character is so poorly developed that we never know what his special likes and dislikes are. The other part of the problem is that not a single fucking character is developed.

The one distinguishing thing for Stiller is that he loves David Bowie, and when he meets Ackerman, he discovers she has Bowie underwear. Nothing more is said about this. Yet later, to show us he's bonding with Monaghan, they sing along to Bowie. What the fuck? How does that make Monaghan more right?

The movie trods along like a moose stuck in mud, punctuated by jokes that suggest that Farrelly's are just shooting blind these days. Gone are the surprisingly gross-yet-somehow-sweet moments of their older movies. Now it's just gross. Hee-hee, a woman has too much hair on her vagina. Hoo-hoo, a woman has to pee on a man. Giggle-giggle, a girl says nasty things in bed. There is also a donkey show joke, a running gag with a mariachi band and Carlos Mencia, whose entire career is the warning light for the gas tank of jokes, letting you know you're almost empty.

This is a fucking trainwreck. No, wait, a masturbating trainwreck: two trains filled with shit smashing into each other. A miserable, burning-sensation piss of a movie. Tired jokes, loud volume where humor should be, a whole cast on unlikable pricks doing unlikable things, and not fucking point. Fuck it, man. One Finger for The Heartbreak Kid.