This time, the hotel I'm staying in has HBO, and they actually played a movie about which I was just interested enough to watch. The movie was the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben & Jerry Stiller (sounds like they should be making ice cream), the precocious Malin Akerman, and the still very attractive ex-Tom Brady squeeze Michelle Monaghan. She was great opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which I briefly mentioned in my blog post on film noirs.
The Heartbreak Kid remake was a decent enough movie, if you consider that the Farrelly Brothers really were recycling two older Hollywood films, not one. The first, naturally, was the 1972 original "Neil Simon's" Heartbreak Kid*, starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. The other film was one of their own, the very entertaining and quite good There's Something About Mary (1998). Mary still is one of my favorite of more recent comedies, and perhaps is the reason why I have a higher Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor** than most of my friends.
* Why don't movie directors, writers, or producers put their names in front of their movies any more these days? Neil Simon and Blake Edwards did it a lot, and who can forget the Albert R. Broccoli 007 films? Seems like a quaint old Hollywood tradition that went by the wayside several decades ago.
** On a somewhat related note, I always talk about reaching the FDA-approved Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) any time I watch a Sam Neill movie. When we went to see Jurassic Park (1993) on an IMAX screen, I must have overdosed several times over on my Sam Neill RDA!
Watching this remake of Heartbreak Kid, I was struck by how similar it was to Mary, and I do wonder whether the Farrelly Brothers are running out of ideas. I was happy to see the movie for free, essentially, in my hotel room*. It was a good movie, but it naturally contains all of those irritating Ben Stillerisms that annoy people so greatly. Like I said, you have to build up your Tolerance Level if you want to enjoy a Ben Stiller movie. It's like alcohol that way, only you really don't want to have to keep ingesting ever higher amounts of Ben Stiller movies in order to achieve the same buzz you once had watching a single episode of "The Ben Stiller Show."**
* Side note: Another movie that is good to catch for "free" -- Fool's Gold (2008) with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson -- just finished playing on HBO tonight.
** Actually, did anyone ever think that show was funny? No, I didn't think so. I just couldn't think of a better analogy.
I won't get into some of the better parts of The Heartbreak Kid, since that's really not why I'm writing this post. [At this point, I always think of Albert Brooks telling Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), "How do you like that? I buried the lead."]
No, the real reason why I wanted to write a post about watching the remake of what is probably an equally cringe-worthy 1972 Neil Simon movie is because the original starred Charles Grodin, The Actor You Love to Hate. See? I told you I buried the lead!
Grodin actually has some decent chops as a comedic thespian. The Grodin humor touchstones for me are two of his newer films, and I'm not talking about Beethoven (1992) or its sequel. He did a very funny buddy movie of a very different sort with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run (1988). DeNiro was a bounty hunter charged with bringing Grodin's accountant character in, and as he tried to do so, hijinks ensued. That's about all the plot you really need to know on that one.
The other Grodin movie I love to watch any chance I get is Taking Care of Business (1990), which still ranks as the all-time funniest Jim Belushi movie. Sure, Belushi was in The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), but that was a Tom Hanks vehicle. K-9 (1989) was OK, and Mr. Destiny (1990) was the movie that came closest to matching Taking Care of Business, but for my money, I stop and watch Business any chance I get. Even if that means coming across the movie half-way through it, I'll watch the rest of it. I don't do that for other Belushi movies.
There is just something about Grodin's character in Business (and in Midnight Run, for that matter) that can drive a person crazy. He makes the viewer actively start to root against his character, and in both of those movies, bad things happen to Grodin. I sincerely think that's a large part of why I like those two movies. The longer Grodin snivels and whines his way through the performance, the more you want him to suffer. He's a perfect comedic foil for the good guys of DeNiro and Belushi.
I also love that Belushi plays such a die-hard Cubs fan that he sneaks out of his minimum-security prison to attend a Cubs World Series game (I know, it's a complete Hollywood fantasy), catches a home run (shown on the TV broadcast, but not noticed by the prison warden, played by Hector Elizondo), and then he sneaks back in to prison so he can be paroled the next day. You do have to suspend disbelief, but that's all part of the fun! Oh, and there is the very cute Loryn Locklin in a black bikini; how could I not post a pic of that?!
Of course, I am aware that the two actors that brought me to this post, Stiller and Grodin, share some of the same qualities in their acting methods. They both can be really freakin' annoying! They just might be the actors we all love to hate for a given generation. And yet, Stiller continues to get new acting gigs all the time.I haven't seen Night at the Museum (2006) yet, but I continue to hear good things about Tropic Thunder (2008). That might have to be another Ben Stiller movie I put on my Netflix list.
It's a very good thing I've built up my Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor throughout the years.
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1 comment:
Of course, I screwed up the analogy for the Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor. It's not like alcohol at all. No, it's more like the Man in Black building up a tolerance for iocane powder over an extended period of time.
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