Farrellys connect characters, and it works

Friday, December 12, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Filmmaking brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly have earned guffaws, box-office success and censure aplenty for their politically incorrect gross-out comedies. When they're not making fun of a person's physical or mental shortcomings, they arrange for semen to drip from Ben Stiller's hair so Cameron Diaz can mistake it for styling gel.

	'STUCK ON YOU' RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor and some language. STARRING: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear. DIRECTORS: Bobby and Peter Farrelly.

But the Farrellys get the last laugh with their new movie, "Stuck on You," in which Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear play conjoined twins. You can start howling now about the tastelessness of it, or you can actually see it and discover an unexpectedly sweet comedy about two brothers who, literally and figuratively, can't live without each other.

Dumb and dumber? Yeah, like a couple of foxes. The Farrellys could not go any lower than their 2000 release "Me, Myself and Irene," in which Jim Carrey played a man with a split personality who uses sexual appliances and rams a chicken's head up a man's butt. I called the movie "anguish exploited for laughs," a film about people the audience finds pitiable.

The Farrellys don't make that mistake this time. Damon and Kinnear portray Bob and Walt Tenor, residents of Martha's Vineyard who are joined at the hip. They never separated because they share a liver, and there is a 50-50 chance Walt wouldn't survive the operation.

But they don't let their condition stop them from doing anything they want -- and, in the movie's quirky version of reality, neither does anyone else. In school, they played football -- Bob scored the winning touchdown, Walt made the key block -- and hockey, where they played goalie and didn't need oversized pads.

As adults, they own a hamburger joint. At the grill, they're so in sync that they can assemble a tray of sandwiches in half the time it would take anyone else. On the side, Walt engages his thespian muse at the town's theater (Bob dresses as a prop). The townspeople give the island a feeling of family. So does the fact that Damon and the Farrellys hail from New England.

But Walt dreams of Hollywood stardom, and Bob reluctantly agrees to go. Although he has a crush on May (Wen Yann Shih), an Internet chat pal who lives there, he doesn't want to look her up -- he hasn't told her about Walt, who has no qualms as regards women. In one scene, he's having sex while Bob sits on the other side of a curtain, writing a letter on his laptop. The brothers also have a platonic friendship with sexy April (Eva Mendes).

Hollywood reacts to Walt and Bob much as you think it would, but the guys refuse to give up. Some of the movie's best laughs come at the expense of Tinseltown and its preening egos. Cher, playing herself, is a pretty good sport as a prima donna trying to break a network contract by insisting on casting Walt as her co-star. And did you ever think you would see Meryl Streep in a Farrelly brothers movie, even without screen credit?

The secret to the movie's success, however, is the casting of Damon and Kinnear, two good actors who can play comedy without relying solely on their groins. The actors were literally harnessed together while making the movie, so their compatibility was crucial. They work together beautifully -- Kinnear as the more outgoing sibling, Damon as the shyer one -- and pull off some physically impressive stunts.

The Farrellys surprised us with their previous movie, "Shallow Hal," which celebrated the idea that even obese people can be beautiful on the inside. Of course, they also loaded the movie with fat jokes.

In "Stuck on You," an obnoxious customer refers to Walt and Bob and a handicapped waiter in their restaurant as freaks. Their response, in effect: Yeah, and proud of it. For once, the Farrellys have us laughing with their characters, not at them.

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