I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry
I Now Pronouce You Chuck and Larry, (2007) directed byDennis Dugan and starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James
It’s hard to know where or when to begin to summarise this awful film. Two died-in-the- wool heterosexual firefighters, Chuck and Larry, decide to go through a Gay marriage in order to iron out some issues ofpension rights. Chuck is an inarticlulate sexist thug, who beats up anyone who even breathes or speaks in his immediate vicinity. That is when he is not sleeping with five or six women at a time. Any problem in any social situation can be solved by merely crunching any other person’s chin. This includes people who say the word ‘faggots’ (to or about them) or the hate-filled religious bigot who vilifies them verbally. This looks as if it has more to do with Popeye or some other comic book fantasy than relationships, for this film purports to be something of a ‘relationship’ film and also a ‘comedy’(but it isn’t very funny). Exploiting every jaded cliché in the book about Gay relationships and Gay culture, the film exhausts itself by attempting toexplain the inexplicable to both Chuck and Larry: the fact that they can’t possibly be Gay because they’resimply not. How it then goes on to expound, to tease out this flimsy stuff into a ‘film’ is a matter ofsome wonderment, astonishment.But of course it’s merely annoying, perplexing rubbish. For sure the film has been a major box office draw in the US but this must give us pause toreflect on the nature and character of audiences inthe US, rather than any quality the film has. British audiences may not endorse it so forthrightly, in fact it deserves not to be endorsed and is merely a bad, unsubtle, ugly film. We shouldn’t dignify it with the titling ‘homophobic’ because, very simply, the makers of the film don’t know what a homosexual is. Nor do they have the slightest idea about Gay culture or Gay relationships. Any critic might retort, but then they know how to make a dollar. That’s true, but what’s the point in having piles of dollars when any person of intelligence knows that you are an imbecile? Its not a question of integrity. The makers of this film have none. The tragic fact is that they’re making films for morons, finding a list of ingredients that fit the formula and succeeding. But furthermorethe film isn’t even a successful parody of otherrecent hits like ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which itmentions in passing as an essential component of theGay uniform that Chuck & Larry go out and buy at thelocal store, along with albums by Cher, Wham and BoyGeorge. They’re trading in cliches, as did ‘BrokebackMountain’, rather than depicting truths. The truth of a culture exhausted by the insurmountable ugliness of its own execrable ordinariness, trivialism, ability to practice self-hypnosis with an agenda or set of issues that simply don’t matter or add up to anything. Thef ilm is a re-packaging of already packaged, damaged or obsolete cliches, a real rubbish dump composed oftrash that no one needs.
Paul Murphy, Ealing Empire, London
It’s hard to know where or when to begin to summarise this awful film. Two died-in-the- wool heterosexual firefighters, Chuck and Larry, decide to go through a Gay marriage in order to iron out some issues ofpension rights. Chuck is an inarticlulate sexist thug, who beats up anyone who even breathes or speaks in his immediate vicinity. That is when he is not sleeping with five or six women at a time. Any problem in any social situation can be solved by merely crunching any other person’s chin. This includes people who say the word ‘faggots’ (to or about them) or the hate-filled religious bigot who vilifies them verbally. This looks as if it has more to do with Popeye or some other comic book fantasy than relationships, for this film purports to be something of a ‘relationship’ film and also a ‘comedy’(but it isn’t very funny). Exploiting every jaded cliché in the book about Gay relationships and Gay culture, the film exhausts itself by attempting toexplain the inexplicable to both Chuck and Larry: the fact that they can’t possibly be Gay because they’resimply not. How it then goes on to expound, to tease out this flimsy stuff into a ‘film’ is a matter ofsome wonderment, astonishment.But of course it’s merely annoying, perplexing rubbish. For sure the film has been a major box office draw in the US but this must give us pause toreflect on the nature and character of audiences inthe US, rather than any quality the film has. British audiences may not endorse it so forthrightly, in fact it deserves not to be endorsed and is merely a bad, unsubtle, ugly film. We shouldn’t dignify it with the titling ‘homophobic’ because, very simply, the makers of the film don’t know what a homosexual is. Nor do they have the slightest idea about Gay culture or Gay relationships. Any critic might retort, but then they know how to make a dollar. That’s true, but what’s the point in having piles of dollars when any person of intelligence knows that you are an imbecile? Its not a question of integrity. The makers of this film have none. The tragic fact is that they’re making films for morons, finding a list of ingredients that fit the formula and succeeding. But furthermorethe film isn’t even a successful parody of otherrecent hits like ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which itmentions in passing as an essential component of theGay uniform that Chuck & Larry go out and buy at thelocal store, along with albums by Cher, Wham and BoyGeorge. They’re trading in cliches, as did ‘BrokebackMountain’, rather than depicting truths. The truth of a culture exhausted by the insurmountable ugliness of its own execrable ordinariness, trivialism, ability to practice self-hypnosis with an agenda or set of issues that simply don’t matter or add up to anything. Thef ilm is a re-packaging of already packaged, damaged or obsolete cliches, a real rubbish dump composed oftrash that no one needs.
Paul Murphy, Ealing Empire, London
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