Cinephobia Reviews: There's Something About Mary

There's Something About Mary (Peter and Bobby Farrelly), 1998

The first thing I have to say is that it has definitely not been a good few years for comedies: with the cinemas packed full of blockbuster disaster films, comedies have largely retreated to the video market. This is an arena that does not provide great rewards for talent, and if there have been great comedies produced in recent years then they have eluded my radar at the very least. Many so-called comedies are in fact lame light dramas with only a few jokes (The Wedding Singer comes to mind). So I was glad when There's Something About Mary turned out to be so good. This is a comedy that is worth getting excited about.

We might also want to get excited about the people who made it, brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly. The brothers co-scripted, and Peter directed, the Jim Carrey vehicle Dumb and Dumber in 1994 (which I have not seen); directing together, they followed it with the bowling comedy Kingpin in 1996. They didn't receive screen credit for scripting Kingpin, but I'm inclined to think some kind of screenwriter's guild shenanigans might be responsible. There's a lot of continuity between TSAM and Kingpin; if it turns out that the Farrelly brothers are really the comic auteurs responsible for the success of both films, then we have a major new comic talent on our hands. TSAM is an extremely funny film.

This is not to say it is for all tastes. Oh no. Kingpin was a vulgar film, willing to sink very low for its jokes; TSAM is, if anything, even lower. There is a scene here so grossly scatological that I felt preemptively embarrassed for anyone foolish enough to take elderly relations along to it ("C'mon grandma, we'll take you to a nice romantic comedy"), but it's just one detail in a landscape of poor taste that at times left me aghast. The Farrellys dive into material that must take considerable courage. Their gross-outs are genuinely gross, and there is an emphasis on physical disfigurement that is really disturbing. As with Kingpin, I was frankly amazed that well known stars had agreed to appear in such material (this time, Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz and Matt Dillon step up to the plate). And there is a reckless abandonment about the Farrelly's treatment of normally taboo subjects (both physical and mental disabilities, for example) that disarms you enough to enjoy the jokes even as you cringe at their tactlessness.

There's a sense in which I know this doesn't sound promising, and it is true that we are talking about low comedy. There isn't much sophistication here, and there's part of me that also suspects I wouldn't much like the Farrellys if I met them. There's something all too convincing about the evilness in their films: the nasty characters are very mean indeed, and the heroes are almost gleefully humiliated (this is clearer in Kingpin, when you think about the evil Bill Murray and good-but-pathetic Woody Harrelson). In the process all the characters are debased and humiliated, and the jokes centre around the topics that polite scoiety spends most of its time studiously avoiding.

But we are faced with a choice. Do we disdain the Farrellys and try to deny our enjoyment? Or do we admit that whatever else we might feel, funny is funny, and we should abandon our pretensions and go with it? I, for one, am happy to go with the latter crowd. Roll on the next Farrelly brothers film.

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