I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry - Movie Review

Well, for a while I swore off most Hollywood movies and with good reason. I've seen a plethora of bad ones in the past year (either through rental or purchase). It does seem like the old days with movies that have a good plot, superlative acting and creative humour have fallen by the wayside, now replaced with dull, unimaginative and utterly unfunny jokes and non-memorable catch-phrases.

This past Saturday, my wife was out visiting a friend in another town, so I had my son for the day so I thought I'd take him to a movie (at the theatre). He has only seen two movies in the theatre before - Curious George and Over the Hedge, but based on what I heard about The Bee Movie, it seemed pretty good. To my pleasant surprise, it was. Of course, after the amount of cash I dropped to see it (tix plus food), it made me think twice, but I thought, "well, at least Hollywood is not all crap". So given the fact that we are on vacation today due to my wife's pregnancy appointments, I thought I'd rent a few movies for the family to watch last night. I got my son Ratatoule, which was pretty good, and I got my wife and I the recently released comedy, "I Now Pronounce You as Chuck and Larry". I am generally not a big Adam Sandler fan, but I thought that the premise of the movie was interesting. I didn't think that it was be a pro gay marriage movie, but more of a corny cheeseball flick that was more immature and had some slapstick situational humour. Boy, was I wrong on all counts.

The whole premise of the movie centers around a couple of firefighters, Larry (Kevin James) and Chuck (Adam Sandler). Larry is a widower who is raising a young son and daughter, and is, by all means, a family man. Chuck is a philandering man-whore who will be happy to get booty any way he can. As a result of Larry saving Chuck's life, Chuck indicates that he owes Larry. Larry decides that Chuck can repay this debt by "marrying" him through a same-sex partnership, since that would entitle Chuck to get Larry's pension in order to take care of his kids, should Larry die. Then, of course, things spiral in all directions when the scheme starts to take all sorts of unexpected twists. Without revealing much about the plot to spoil it for people who haven't seen the movie, I do have some general observations about the movie.

First, some positive elements. While I don't condone fraud, I do think that the fact that the Larry character wants to take care of his children is an admirable quality. In my view, the ends do not justify the means, but surely we can be sympathetic to a father who wants to take care of his children. Another positive aspect of the movie was the deep friendship seen in the Chuck and Larry characters - the fact that despite squabbles, and irritating each other to death at times, they still maintained a fairly warm, brotherly comaraderie, backing each other up when needed, and being there emotionally for each other when needed.

Despite some positive qualities, I feel that the movie is severely tainted by some negative components. The first of which is its obviously rabidly pro-gay stance, which I suppose should not be surprising, given Hollywood's severe left-wing bent. Not just in the Chuck and Larry characters, but also in Larry's son, who obviously is in need of some testosterone shots, based on some of his past times and activities. Perhaps I was naive, but I was seriously surprised by how much gay lifestyle and gay culture made it into this movie. I expected something slapstick silly, but there was obviously the same old bullshit message about "tolerance for gay, transexual, transgender, asexual", and the other plethora of sexual deviances known to man, as well as the constant barrage of cross-dressing men and such. To have Dan Ackroyd make his little speech at the end about tolerance was baffling, since his character wasn't that well developed to begin with.

Even though I am not one to be easily offended, I took tremendously gross offence at the way Asians were stereotyped in this movie. At the beginning, the Chuck character can be seen gallivanting with a group of scantily-clad Asian girls (reinforcing an unfortunate existing prevalent stereotype). I've never liked Rob Schneider, but the fact that he actually had the gall to put on a ridiculous suit from the 60s/70s (with matching haircut) and then make-up his face so he looks Japanese, and then put on a historically stereotypical broken-English Japanese accent, making the character look severely unintelligent - well, I can say that I will be boycotting anything to do with this asswipe in the near future. Of course, if he had done this and painted his face black and put on an ebonics accent, the film would have never seen the light of day and he probably would be fearing for his life right now. But it disturbs me greatly to see that Asians seem to be fair fodder for racist propaganda in these movies. Thankfully, I have heard that the movie has more than its fair share of critics other than me.

Combine all this with the fact that the movie constantly pokes fun at the weight of Larry - I'm surprised that Kevin James accepted the script - it shows that this movie, while trying to get laughs, will stoop to the lowest of the low to obtain them. Don't get me wrong - there is nothing wrong with humour, and even humour that may not be necessarily in the best taste - but it should not be at the expense of those who have historically been targets of such bigotry. To see Sandler and Schneider, both of whom have Jewish blood (and Schneider has a bit of Filipino blood) mock people racially - well, it's clear that both aren't well read in history. I once read Schneider commenting on how he would never work with Mel Gibson after Gibson's anti-semitic remarks. What a freaking hypocrite.

This perhaps should not be of much surprise to me, but I was a little shocked to see the overt sexuality in the movie, including the scene where the Chuck character is visibly fondling the breasts of the Jessica Biel character. My wife and I thought that was really dumb, not funny, and was there just to put some shock value into the movie

This movie had lots of potential - but as often is the case in Hollywood movies, I should not get my hopes up.