Farrellys make mess out of ‘Kid’

Their raucous slapstick humor doesn’t work in this film remake.

By COLIN COVERT

(MINNEAPOLIS) STAR TRIBUNE

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hiring the raucous Farrelly brothers to remake Elaine May’s deliciously caustic stab at love, marriage and infidelity is a recipe for disappointment, like mixing shrimp and chocolate pudding.

May’s 1972 double Oscar nominee, the story of a honeymooner who deserts his bride when he spots a better prospect, is a blackhearted comedy of pain and embarrassment. The Farrellys thrive in the world of gross-out farce and noggin-cracking physical comedy. They’re wizards with groin injuries. Heartbreak, not so much. Slapping them together with the martini-dry May is just the sort of ill-considered marriage that sets the story in motion, and the outcome is every bit as rocky.

Plot

San Francisco sports shop owner Eddie (Ben Stiller) has commitment issues that have rendered him a lonely, aging singleton. When he meets unattached knockout Lila (Malin Akerman), Eddie’s married best friend (Rob Corddry) and party animal father (Jerry Stiller) urge him to get in the game, and fast. One whirlwind romance later, the couple are on their way to a Mexican seaside resort honeymoon.

But no sooner are they checked into the bridal suite than Eddie is queasy with buyer’s remorse. He learns too late that his bride is sexually voracious, gratingly moody, and prone to sneezing her food up and out her nose. Because all that cocaine she used to snort rotted her septum. Along with leaving her frighteningly in debt.

Shellshocked, Eddie attracts the friendly attention of Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), a sexy sprite on holiday with her family. She’s vivacous, athletic, level-headed and — since Eddie’s wedding ring is in the hotel vault for safekeeping — unaware that he’s married. Thanks to a catastrophic sunburn that keeps Lila in the bedroom under a mess of skin lotion, Eddie and Miranda develop an infatuation that has him looking for the return receipt on his marriage license.

Big difference

May’s film, a product of a braver time, confronted the fact that the unfaithful husband was a jerk, while the Farrellys, prisoners of test marketing, have tried without success to make him likable. Stiller plays the role as if he was the victim of an absurd marital misunderstanding, and as if his efforts to unload the disappointing Lila were the kind of thing covered by a matrimonial lemon law.

The results are not endearing. Eddie comes off not as a beleaguered Everyman but a heedless, dishonest knob trying to undo a deal that gave him exactly what he deserved.

The Farrellys ladle on their trademark over-the-top slapstick, with Akerman baring all in bedroom and beach scenes designed to test just how grotesque a nude woman can be made to seem. She throws herself into the part with the game enthusiasm of a new-edition Cameron Diaz, but her character is so unattractive in every department but physical beauty that she can’t generate much comic traction.

The real surprise is Carlos Mencia, playing an exuberant clerk at the resort hotel. He’s far more entertaining here than on his hack sketch humor series on Comedy Central, but when Carlos Mencia is the funniest thing in your movie, you’ve got serious problems.