The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

[StevePulaski]

The Heartbreak Kid (2007)
Directed by: Bob Farrelly and Peter Farrelly

Rating: ★½

The Heartbreak Kid is a deplorable comedy with a seriously backwards moral compass. It's billed as a romantic comedy but I'm struggling to find a romantic side to its dreadful, nihilistic comedy. It isn't enough that the film be impossibly unromantic but also completely dirty-minded and cynical to the point where liking it is above and beyond the call of a cinematic duty. This is the kind of third-rate schlock that belongs in the straight-to-DVD pile along with comedies such as Road Trip: Beer Pong. Not the film by the Farrelly brothers, two of the most prominent and respected names in comedy/gross-out comedy.

Along with bearing two respectable directors, the film also has headliners such as Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Åkerman, Rob Corrdry, Carlos Mencia, and Danny McBride that it victimizes to its awfulness. Ben Stiller stars as Eddie, the owner of a sports-store, who is single and hesitant about opening up the door and starting a new relationship. One day, however, he sees a woman named Lila (Malin Åkerman) being victim to a harsh mugging. While failing to retrieve her purse, they sort of hit it off and go on to date after meeting each other once more. Lila, however, is a member of some environmental science group, and, because she's single, is offered a trip to study abroad.

Even though they're only about six weeks into the relationship, Eddie goes out on a whim and proposes to Lila, throwing complete caution to the wind and the two decide to honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. Upon marrying her, Eddie doesn't realize that marrying Lila could be the biggest mistake of his life, as she is completely obnoxious, not self-aware to the feelings of others, likes her sex a bit too rough, and has no social boundaries whatsoever. In walks Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), a simple, older woman who is on vacation with her cousins so her aunt/uncle can renew their wedding vows for the umpteenth time. After Lila gets a painful and embarrassing sunburn, Eddie completely sidelines her and favors Miranda's company, an already despicable move on his part. But as the film goes on, it's clear that Eddie's personality is predicated off of senseless actions and moves to make him in power over everyone else.

A reminder: this is the man we're so supposed to call our protagonist. This schmuck is the man whom we're supposed to side and sympathize with throughout the film. The Farrellys' first fatal flaw is that they give us a lead character who is completely unconscionable and unlikable. He's mercilessly rude, as un-self aware as his wife, and always seems to know how to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. His wife, on the other hand, is no better, playing an insufferable nag who finds ways to be more and more obnoxious to the point where her very presence treads the line of being totally unrealistic.

It's sad to see Stiller and Åkerman get such lowly characters in a comedy, but it's almost as bad as the Farrelly brothers failing at what they're known best for - gross-out humor. There is a line between gross-out humor and just being flat out immature and desperate and it's such a thin, easy line to cross into the latter territory that it explains why many writers/directors opt-out of it. Consider the scene where Eddie is being attacked by a jellyfish and, upon ripping it off his back, Lila pulls down her jeans, sprouts open her vagina like a Venus-fly-trap, and proceed to urinate on her husband's back to numb the pain. The scene is agonizingly awful and has no laughs to offer. It reeks of total desperation for laughs that it wouldn't be worth commenting on if it weren't for the numerous things it does wrong. It effectively makes nearly every character involved more unlikable than they already were.

If we want to get really involved and lay our criticism on thick, look how this film portrays middle-aged American bachelors. They look like cold, unfeeling Neanderthals who are motivated by ego and personal pleasure. It makes commitment look like impromptu-meeting scheduling and divorce look like a five-year-old quitting a board game. It sends terrible messages to people around the world about how we Americans perceive marital bonds and serious unions. For anyone willing to disagree, just take another look at the ending of the film, which is so soulless and cheap it's hard to believe it took five writers to concoct it and all the preceding events.

The Heartbreak Kid is a comedy with a bad attitude, not the kind that is so uproariously funny and foul, but the kind of bad attitude that gets you sent upstairs with no dessert. It's another entry in the ever-growing genre of "maximum antics, minimum laughter," a term I coined to identify when comedies emphasize stupidity over wit so-much-so they forget that the antics should be funny and enjoyable to watch. The Farrelly brothers are two of the biggest names in comedy, with good films like Stuck on You and There's Something About Mary under their belt, but with The Heartbreak Kid they've made one of the hardest comedies to like, let alone tolerate, and sit-through of the last decade.

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Malin Åkerman, Michelle Monaghan, Carlos Mencia, Rob Corrdry, and Danny McBride. Directed by: Bob Farrelly and Peter Farrelly.