There’s Something About Mary earns its biggest laughs through Ben Stiller’s discomfort and Cameron Diaz’s ease. We recommend its cheerful indecency, with patience required for the slack middle and a romance that gives its men too much attention.
There’s Something About Mary is a funny, overlong romantic comedy whose appetite for humiliating its characters sometimes gets ahead of its affection for them. Peter and Bobby Farrelly make bad taste feel welcoming, which takes more care than the apparent carelessness suggests. We recommend it to anyone who enjoys physical comedy and does not need the people performing it to behave sensibly. Some trimming would have helped, particularly when the film expects its courtship to hold our attention between the larger jokes.
Ben Stiller’s Ted Stroehmann gives the comedy someone worth worrying about. Stiller plays embarrassment with the anxious concentration of a man who believes he can still put things right by trying harder. We laughed, then felt a little ashamed of ourselves, at how much of the pleasure comes from Ted’s physical distress. Stiller keeps him recognisably anxious throughout the indignities, so there is usually a person to care about once the laughter subsides.
Cameron Diaz’s Mary Jensen is equally important, though the writing gives her less help. Diaz has an ease that makes the attention paid to Mary comprehensible, and she does not strain to match the comic exertions around her. The problem is how little messiness Mary is permitted compared with the men: being desirable occupies too much of her character. Diaz supplies humour and warmth, but we kept wishing the screenplay would give her the same freedom to be foolish or difficult.
The screenplay, credited to Ed Decter, John J. Strauss and the Farrellys, gives the men ample opportunity to advertise their inadequacies. Matt Dillon’s Pat Healy is particularly useful here, because Dillon makes self-satisfaction funny without asking us to find it lovable. Yet too much of the surrounding comic business keeps returning to variations on male foolishness. The individual performances supply more variety than the writing, and a few fewer detours would have helped the jokes that remain.
Mark Irwin’s straightforward cinematography keeps the performers easy to read, a useful service in a film so dependent on bodily embarrassment. The images seldom supply much comic pleasure of their own, but they do not compete with the actors. Christopher Greenbury’s editing gives discomfort time to become funny, although the middle lets too much material hang about after its comic possibilities have been exhausted. At 120 minutes, the film asks for more patience between its substantial laughs than it consistently earns.
Jonathan Richman’s music helps keep the tone amiable, providing some relief from the competitive foolishness. That lightness matters, because relentless ridicule would make the film exhausting. The Farrellys generally seem fond of the people they embarrass, and the actors give us reasons to share that fondness. There are still moments when someone’s humiliation is expected to be sufficient in itself, without a further surprise or a revealing response, and those jokes feel cheaper.
For a romantic comedy, it spends a disproportionate amount of energy on the men and their indignities. That imbalance matters, but Diaz brings enough warmth to make the romantic attention credible, while Stiller makes the prospect of further embarrassment oddly worrying. The Farrellys are often good at prolonging that worry until laughing becomes difficult to resist. Choose it for an evening of physical comedy, with fair warning that the courtship is the less convincing part.
