There's Something About Mary (1998)

Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Lee Evans

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. It released in that unique period of life where I had to exercise diplomacy and rhetorical skills that normally would have gotten me a job with the United Nations so that I could record an R-rated movie off of HBO for my future edification. It certainly helped that dear old dad thought it was the funniest movie he had ever seen, and needed his son to bear witness to it.

Did I Like It: Although, the experience of watching it on release at the age of 14 is a stark difference from re-watching it again after a long time at the age of 41. The embarrassment hits differently. The nostalgia, too. Regret for missed chances*.

That’s a lot for a comedy to fall into, much less aspire towards. I think one of the few things that has become abundantly clear lately is that comedy inherently ages poorly. Everybody quotes lines from Anchorman (2004) for the better part of a year, and the memory of laughing so hard you lost your breath begin to fade, because there isn’t much else there. Ace Ventura Pet Detective (1994) goes from being every ten-year-old’s favorite movie to a willfully toxic, singularly unwatchable mess.

Here, though, there’s an interesting alchemy in mixing the pitch-black heart of masculinity gone wrong and genuine warmth. It makes the jokes still work. It makes what we would easily call political incorrectness still amusing, when it is coming from either human error (hair gel, I’m looking in your direction), or the willful caterwauling of the worst people you can imagine (now it’s your turn, Matt Dillon).

In short, the comedy of There’s Something About Mary still works because there is something human at the core of it all. I wasn’t expecting that upon re-watching it all these years later.

*This feels like what Heather Burns called in You’ve Got Mail (1998) as “like people who brag because they’re tall,” but I’m not cursed with too terribly much of that particular problem.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. What else was there to do in the summer of 2008 but see whatever Robert Downey Jr. movie was coming down the pike?

Did I Like It: At the core, its a pretty funny comedy that manages to actually channel the scope and energy of the movies—chief among them Apocalypse Now (1979) and Hearts of Darkness (1991) with more than a little bit of Platoon (1986) thrown in—it mocks.

Obviously, there’s going to be some things in the film that don’t age well. The lengths to which Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr.) tries to get into the head of Lincoln Osiris is not something that would pass the smell test today. Tugg Speedman’s (Stiller) futile attempt to reach for respectability in Simple Jack got a fair amount of guff at the time of release. But both of those elements are more about the foolishness of movie actors blindly reaching for those portrayals without really thinking about the limits of their own believability and good sense.

While whispers still exist that Les Grossman (Cruise) will get his own spin-off film one day (it doesn’t really feel like the kind of film that Cruise could possibly be talked into anymore; then again, it didn’t really feel like that back then, either), I’d submit that his is the character which ages most poorly. He is a riff on Hollywood assholes like Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein, but never is he played as a fool. Quite to the contrary, he’s a brash villain one can’t help but wish they were more like. He’s an ugly little man who has commanded every room he’s entered since the 80s. The film loves him in all his reprehensibility, and I admit I even like him.

But I probably shouldn’t.

Zoolander (2001)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, as I was watching it, I was surprised to realize that bits of the movie had drifted into my vernacular over the years. Any time I hear the world derelict, I want to put the accent on the wrong syllable. Mer-man. Crazy pills. The film has far more sticking power than I would have thought.

Did I Like It: It’s humor still holds up reasonably well, which probably elevates it above many of the other comedies of the era. We may try to forget the movie after the rather odious sequel (a film I couldn’t even bring myself to finish) but giving it another shot is bound to give you some degree of enjoyment. It may not be at the level of some of Stiller’s other, more cerebral work like The Cable Guy (1996) or Severance, but if we judge every film for not having any sort of idea behind it, we probably wouldn’t watch much of anything anymore.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s my one irretrievable problem with the movie. I’m not going to name any names*, but I was supremely not in any sort of mood to laugh after hearing from the fourth person in the movie to have any dialogue. You’ll know the moment when you see it**. He shows up in all sorts of movies during this era. And I can’t help but wonder if there is truly nothing—from the “On Our Own” music video from Ghostbusters II (1989) to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—that this guy can’t ruin just by showing up. That’s clearly not Stiller’s fault, but one wonders if those odious platforms designed to edit out any sort of adult content from films could actually be re-directed to doing something useful.

*If for no other reason than one does want to avoid getting into an equal time problem…

**If you don’t know the moment, then you may need to re-think large portions of your life.

Night at the Museum (2006)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Robin Williams

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Which elicited a shocked response and an immediate vow to rectify from my wife… I didn’t know it was so important. I’m hesitant to admit—even if it may be implied—that I’ve never seen the sequels, either.

Did I Like It: It’s hard not to like a movie like this. It was very carefully orchestrated to be pleasing and unchallenging. 

The story all fits together, if unremarkably. It’s not astonishingly funny at any moment, but any kid who saw it way back when couldn’t have been judged too harshly for cackling at the antics on display. There’s even enough of a current of intellectual curiosity at the core of the movie—with the possible byproduct of encouraging kids to actually want to visit a museum. It wouldn’t appeal only to stupid kids, or make otherwise bright children any dumber. That’s more than we can expect from many films aimed at children.

Every actor is likable, and selected for the specific purpose of being imminently likable. Indeed, is there another performer in the history of the moving picture more able to elicit those sort of feelings than Dick Van Dyke? Even Robin Williams was in One Hour Photo, and for that matter, Popeye (1980). That’s kind of a strange miracle in a film which features Ricky Gervais, a performer whose built an entire career out of being iconically unlikable.

Is it wrong for a film to be bland in this fashion? I think not, it has modest goals and largely accomplishes them. It’s not subversive in the slightest, and while one may be implied to knock the film for not reaching for more, is it more a knock against a studio system no longer capable of making children’s fare that is at all subversive. Then again, across all criteria, I may very well be the unreasonable one for even wanting something like that.

The Cable Guy (1996)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: It’s one of my favorites. Fight me.

Did I Like It: Don’t make me say it again.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Remembered mainly for Jim Carrey’s then-record twenty-million dollar paycheck, Ben Stiller’s second venture in the director’s chair was almost immediately dismissed upon release as “too dark,” “bleak,” and “not containing nearly enough scenes of an adult male attempting ventriloquism via his buttocks.” For my money, though it is not only a great film, it is the best film that writer Judd Apatow, director Stiller and star Carrey has yet to make. 

Yes, it is the pitch-black tale of a cable installer gone rogue who injects himself into a hapless customer’s life, a la The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992). It’s more thriller-esque elements are tempered by an all-consuming sympathy for both of its main characters. Both Steven (Matthew Broderick) and the alias-laden titular Cable Guy (Carrey) are woefully unable to relate to people outside of television*. Broderick’s character has the capacity to change and be better by the end of the movie, whereas Carrey is a far more broken, far more tragic character. We, the pop culture obsessed inevitably fall on a spectrum somewhere between the two leads, and we can only hope that our lives are a little more Broderick and a little less Carrey.

Also, it has one of the greater homages to “Amok Time” ever produced—what’s not to love? Seriously, go give the film another look, and if you still hold as low an opinion of the movie as you did twenty years ago… Well, then, just keep it to yourself. I really like it.

But we can all agree it’s better than Zoolander 2 (2016), right?

*Remind us of anyone?