Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
What? Are you surprised? Surprised I even went to go see it? OK, here’s the deal. We wanted to see another movie to lighten the air after The Green Mile (which is very good but obviously intoxicated us), so we chose this instead of Toy Story 2 (which is fantastic). I expected very little, as I always do, but I got quite a bit less. Gone is the humor potential of the film by most of the decent jokes being shown a hundred times in the preview. Gone is the hope that it will be silly, raunchy fun along the lines of Something About Mary when they cast no one else to support Rob Schneider. Yes, we laughed begrudgingly a couple of times. Other times, other people in the audience laughed while we stared, saddened and vaguely furious that we hadn’t snuck in. One of my companions (the deciding vote in the film selection - NOT THAT I AM BLAMING YOU!) was extremely apologetic and fearful of my wrath. Not so - I expected exactly what I got which was a steaming pile of dull, witless antics with humor that South Park fans would find simplistic and puerile.
Rob Schneider, for all his career mistakes, does have one thing, well, two. He has that great, dead-eyed expression which makes him look like an idiot, but when he then does something clever or reacts belatedly to something, it’s good plain old slapstick acting. He is the king (or the man-queen, in Deuce parlance) of the unmoving-head doubletake. The other things he does (besides whine) is pull off a sincere nice guy, an everyman who appreciates that he doesn’t get much good in life and therefore when he does, we can really see that he appreciates it. If only he were given decent material, he might actually save himself from Deuce Deuce: The Man-Whore returns.
Surreally scary is William Forsythe as some poorly explained cop character, who is really just an excuse for some penis talk in a movie, about gigolos, mind you, almost utterly devoid of sex. The other decent thing about this movie (which still does not make it worthy of recommendation) is the fact that Rob’s character actually does some good and extends a message - granted, a message on how to get in good with women, but a sincere one. Like, with tolerance and kindness and stuff. But it doesn’t, you know, make the movie any funnier. The worst part was seeing gags that could have worked, even would have worked, but then crashed and burned. Nothing is depressing about seeing a pie in the face gag flop - you don’t expect it to work. But when a moderately original idea, executed so badly that it just eliminates all hope of someone else trying it and succeeding, that makes it the most painful.
The internet movie database helpfully notes, “If you like this title, we also recommend…Election.” By all means, just go rent Election (an odd recommendation, really, seems like Night at The Roxbury or Kingpin would be more the companion piece to this dreck) - Election is marvelous. And, if memory serves, there is much more nudity.
MPAA Rating R for sexual content, language, and crude humor.
Release date 12/10/99
Time in minutes 88
Director Mike Mitchell
Studio Touchstone Pictures
