Fassbinder. Fellini. Farrelly Brothers. While critics everywhere this week demean the exposed penises, explosive vomititusness, and general boobery that exemplifies the auteurs’ lesser work, Hall Pass, out in theatres this past weekend, I ponder a bigger question: why is There’s Something About Mary not part of the Criterion Collection?
The Rhode Island-born brothers make movies that revel in the uncanny humiliation of being human. In the Farrelly Brothers’ universe, your penis never stays in your pants for long. Breasts are presented as tan, flapping, cruel surprises you didn’t ask for. People get unexpectedly punched in the face a lot. Their protagonists, either shy repressed everymen (Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary; Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear in Stuck On You), or wild, blathering blowhards (Jim Carrey in Dumb & Dumber and Me, Myself & Irene, Jack Black in Shallow Hal) set off on a course to get what they deserve, but the universe ignores this. The Farrelly Brothers assume that you can’t receive the American Dream until you are sufficiently humiliated. And that’s an authorial value that’s certainly on par with anything Woody Allen or Pedro Almodovar ever put out.
Their next project is an adaptation of the Three Stooges; three short films reveling in all of the slapstick and less of the confused moral ambiguities that make a film like Hall Pass so unnerving. Hall Pass is a watchable film (I sat next to a woman who told me, “The universe is hagiographic, which means the cells of your heart are also in your butt”) and she laughed and cooed all the way through. But for more sentient beings, this bizarre romantic comedy, about two dorks who get a week off from marriage, tries to play it safe while the uncanny seeps in. The most memorable scene of the film features Owen Wilson falling asleep in a spa hot tub, only to be rescued by two naked men — one with a giant African-American penis and one with a tiny Caucasian penis. The penises are not acknowledged, simply hanging. This is Wilson’s moral reward for trying to sleep with a super tanned Australian barista who is not his wife.
I love Farrelly, will always love Farrelly, so much that when they make Hall Pass 2: Just Goin’ To The Bathroom, I’ll be there just to see what they’ll do next. Critics bemoan the brothers for the de-evolution of comedy, but people forget that the 1998 release of There’s Something About Mary pioneered the “gross-out comedy” for a reason. Before the Farrellys, no one in comedy masturbated with such high stakes. Somehow they managed to connect all the painful fragilities of our bodies to our souls.
There is a scene in Dumb & Dumber that executes this elegantly. Lloyd (Jim Carrey) has managed to get himself and his buddy to Vermont to hand off a mysterious suitcase full of cash to his dream girl, not knowing that the suitcase was a ransom reward. They end up spending all of the money, essentially on hideous bolo ties. On the slopes and during a trying period, Lloyd sees his best friend on a date with his dreamgirl. Inadvertently he throws up, just a little, in his mouth. Who hasn’t been there?
To be Farrelly is to err human. To be cruel without realizing it. To make a mistake you want to condone but you are basically an idiot. The Farrellys understand how to write men (female copycat The Sweetest Thing did not understand how to write women) — the mix of clueless ineptitude and bravado that comes with trying to please your equally retarded friends. Other, weaker gross-out comedies have been attempted (Farrelly begat the Scary Movie franchise, which took gross-out to the extreme), but never with the satisfying longing the protagonists of Mary and Dumb & Dumber have for a world that won’t make itself in their image.
The question is, do the Farrelly Brothers think that they’re auteurs? At a round table, Bobby Farrelly says:
“When we’ve come in and talked to people, sometimes that’s pointed out to us — but whatever we’re doing, we’re doing unconsciously. We’re always just thinking, what’s our next movie, how can we make it funny? We do the same sort of things over and over, but each movie is a little bit different and we just want to make people laugh.”
Whatever, Farrelly.
