Taglines: The most fun you can have on video.
There’s Something About Mary movie storyline. Ted was a geek in high school, who was going to go to the prom with one of the most popular girls in school, Mary. The prom date never happened, because Ted had a very unusual accident.
Thirteen years later he realizes he is still in love with Mary, so he hires a private investigator to track her down. That investigator discovers he too may be in love with Mary, so he gives Ted some false information to keep him away from her. But soon Ted finds himself back into Mary’s life, as we watch one funny scene after another.
There’s Something About Mary is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly. It stars Cameron Diaz as the title character with Ben Stiller, Lee Evans, Chris Elliott, and Matt Dillon all playing men who are in love with Mary and vying for her affections.
The film was placed 27th in the American Film Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Laughs: America’s Funniest Movies, a list of the 100 funniest movies of the 20th century. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the fourth-greatest comedy film of all time. Diaz won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, an MTV Movie Award for Best Performance, an American Comedy Award for Best Actress, a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Best Actress. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. It won 4 out of 8 MTV Movie Awards, including Best Movie.
Film Review for There’s Something About Mary
What a blessed relief is laughter. It flies in the face of manners, values, political correctness and decorum. It exposes us for what we are, the only animal with a sense of humor. “There’s Something About Mary” is an unalloyed exercise in bad taste, and contains five or six explosively funny sequences. OK, five explosive, one moderate.
I love it when a movie takes control, sweeps away my doubts and objections, and compels me to laugh. I’m having a physical reaction, not an intellectual one. There’s such freedom in laughing so loudly. I feel cleansed. “There’s Something About Mary” is the latest work by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, brothers whose earlier credits include “Dumb and Dumber” and “Kingpin.” Good taste is not their strong suit. “Dumb and Dumber” includes a scene where a blind boy realizes his parakeet’s head is held on with Scotch tape. “Kingpin” includes a scene where a bowler’s artificial hand gets stuck in the ball and rolls down the alley, flop flop flop.
Now here is a movie about a woman who is beautiful, sunny, good and pure, and inspires a remarkable array of creeps to fall in love with her. There’s … just something about her. Mary is played by Cameron Diaz as a high school knockout who amazes the geeky Ted (Ben Stiller) by asking him to the prom, even though he has pounds of braces on his teeth. (“I have a thing about braces,” she muses, long after.)
Ted turns up proudly for the date, only to set off the first of the movie’s uproariously funny sequences when he asks to use the toilet and then somehow catches in his zipper that part of the male anatomy one least wants to think about in connection with zippers. (“Is it the frank or the beans?” asks Mary’s solicitous stepfather.) In a lesser film, that would be that: The directors would expect us to laugh at his misfortune, and the plot would roll on. Not the Farrelly Brothers. When they get something going, they keep on building, daring themselves to top each outrage. I won’t reveal how the scene develops, apart from noting the perfect timing involved with the unexpected closeup.
Thirteen years pass. Ted is still in love with Mary. He hires a sleazy investigator named Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down. Healy, wearing one of those mustaches that shout “distrust me!,” finds her in Miami, discovers she is an unbelievable babe who is still single and decides to grab her for himself. He tells Ted that she weighs 250 pounds, has four children by three fathers and has just shipped out for Japan as a mail-order bride.
Healy’s trick is to eavesdrop on Mary’s conversations, so he’ll know just what she wants to hear. Among the things most important to her is her retarded brother Warren (W. Earl Brown), who doesn’t like to have his ears touched. Healy poses as the person of her dreams (an architect with a condo in Nepal, who loves to work with retarded people), but he raises the suspicions of another of her suitors, Tucker (Lee Evans), who is an architect who uses crutches. Maybe.
Further plot description would be pointless. The plot exists, like all screwball plots, simply to steer us from one gag to the next. In the TV ads, you may already have seen the moment when the dog of Mary’s deeply tanned neighbor needs to have its heart restarted. That’s because the dog has been tranquilized. There also is a scene where the dog is on speed, and his human target does things with walls and furniture not seen since Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” sequence in “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Then there are the peculiar and intimate preparations Ted goes through in anticipation of his first date with Mary. I have paused here at the keyboard for many minutes, trying to decide how to describe them (a) in a family newspaper, and (b) without spoiling the fun. I cannot. I will simply observe in admiration that after the scene explodes in disbelieving, prolonged laughter, the Farrellys find a way to blindside us with a completely unanticipated consequence that sets us off all over again.
Among the other characters in the movie are Chris Elliott, as Dom, a friend of Ted’s, who has a nervous skin condition (“Do you know what it feels like to have a whitehead on your eyeball?”), and Magda (Lin Shaye), the neighbor, whose tan makes her look like she’s been put through the same process that produces Slim Jims. Magda is funny in a bizarre over the top way, but Dom is more creepy than funny, or is it just that we’re afraid we’ll catch his skin rash?
Stanley Kauffmann, the great film critic of The New Republic, was on Charlie Rose’s show the other night, sharing the discoveries of 40 years as a film critic. What he has noticed over the years, he said, is that we are getting more good dramatic films than in the old days–but fewer good entertainments. It is easier to excel at drama than at comedy. I have no idea if Kauffmann will like “There’s Something About Mary” but his point applies for me: After months and months of comedies that did not make me laugh, here at last is one that did.
There’s Something About Mary (1998)
Directed by: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Lee Evans, Chris Elliott, Lin Shaye, Jeffrey Tambor, Markie Post, Keith David, Khandi Alexander, Marnie Alexenburg
Screenplay by: Ed Decter, John J. Strauss, Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Cinematography by: Mark Irwin
Film Editing by: Christopher Greenbury
Costume Design by: Mary Zophres
Set Decoration by: Scott Jacobson
Art Direction by: Arlan Jay Vetter
Music by: Jonathan Richman
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: July 15, 1998
Views: 693
