CinemaClock Toronto

The Farrelly boys are losing their touch! Stuck On You, while somewhat entertaining and more than a little touching, is even less of a Farrelly Brothers movie than Shallow Hal was. Sure, you've got the usual story of the main characters leaving the North East (in this case, Martha's Vineyard instead of Rhode Island) for seemingly greener pastures, and you've got your song-a-minute Farrelly Brothers soundtrack, which really adds nothing to this movie, but there are no gross-out gags whatsoever. That's fine, no one said a movie had to be nauseatingly revolting to be funny, but unfortunately, there are also no jokes that will make you collapse off your chair, clutching your sides, begging for a respite from a laughing fit that won't seem to stop. The Farrellys made their mark in Hollywood with Dumb & Dumber, a movie that would not have been half as funny as it was without Jim Carrey's goofy antics. Kingpin was a gross-out based disappointment, but then they came back with their second best effort, There's Something About Mary, a secretion-filled laughfest that somehow managed to snag the female portion of the movie-going world almost as effectively as James Cameron did with Titanic. Me, Myself & Irene reunited Carrey with the Farrellys again, but the movie went downhill after the first half hour or so. Shallow Hal was the first step in a maturing process for the boys, offering a sentimental, yet warped love story. But Shallow Hal beats out Stuck On You because, while the jokes don't exactly flow like wine, at least the characters were funny unto themselves. Stuck On You offers no one interesting other than Greg Kinnear's and Matt Damon's jolly Siamese twins. The other characters are as dull as out-of-costume Power Rangers (note:one of these co-stars IS an honest-to-goodness Power Ranger!): Eva Mendes plays a buxom, dimwitted neighbour whose only funny lines come from a few rare display of ignorance, Cher plays herself as a real snooch, but not to the extent she should have for pure comedic value, and Matt Damon's romantic co-star, the beautiful Mighty Morphin Wen Yann Shih, is about as good an actress as one could expect from someone whose greatest claim to fame so far was a role in a children's action movie; she goes through the film with her eyes on the floor, trying to look timid and shy with her mouth wide open half the time. Couldn't they have found Lucy Liu or that Kiana chick? The rest of the cast is your usual assortment of wacky supporters, about half of whom look to be handicapped in some way or another in real life, a commendable Farrelly trademark, but a little overdone here. It's at the point now where it looks like they are running a charity for handicapable actors and extras. While the story is a definite original and does raise some interesting points regarding conjoined twins, the movie just isn't THAT funny. I never once found that I couldn't stop myself from laughing. There were absolutely no scenes that caused the audience to break out into such riotous laughter as to cause me to miss the next 30 seconds of dialogue (see There's Something About Mary's "hair gel") and every joke about the conjoinedness of our two leads that could have been truly funny is delivered with the intention to make us boo the person making the joke instead of truly laughing at the comment. Nope, it's sad to say that the Farrellys are losing what made them great: their genuine sense of tastelessness and politically incorrect humour. While Stuck On You is a 7 as a nice little story, it's a 5 at best for comedy.

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