Why Aren’t the Farrelly Brothers as Good as They Used to Be?
Throughout the years, there have been many filmmakers who helped change the face of cinematic comedy and define a generation’s perception of what’s funny. Off the top of my head, I think of several: the death-defying stunts of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton; the sardonic, self-deprecating wit of Woody Allen; the absurdist slapstick and rapid-fire satire of Mel Brooks or the trio of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker; the more grounded, character-based style of humor with a heavy emotional undercurrent as popularized by James L. Brooks and Judd Apatow. When it comes specifically to mainstream gross-out comedy, for a lot of film buffs, their go-to example would probably be siblings Peter and Bobby Farrelly.
The Farrellys are best remembered as the duo that saw the funny side in the expulsion of bodily fluids and turned it into a cultural phenomenon. Together, they helped turn Jim Carrey into a movie star and make Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz credible box office draws. They unapologetically embrace crude vulgarity while at the same time balancing that out with a softer, gentler side that humanizes their characters, even at their lowest. They often fall into retrograde racial and gender stereotypes, but they also take pride in their inclusion of developmentally disabled characters and even performers as a means of, for lack of a better word, normalizing them on film. While the brothers are still prolific today, they never left the same impact on critics and audiences that they did decades ago. Why is that? Let’s take a look.
The Early Triumphs
After a story credit on the Seinfeld episode The Virgin and taking their names off of the Daniel Stern vehicle Bushwhacked when their original script was changed drastically, the Farrellys made their official directorial debut on Dumb & Dumber, starring Carrey and Jeff Daniels as slow-witted but good-hearted best friends Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, respectively, who take a trip to Colorado to return a suitcase full of money to its owner, the beautiful Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly). What they don’t know, however, is that Mary intentionally left the suitcase behind in order to pay ransom and free her kidnapped husband, thus his captors are on the duo’s trail, and naturally, hijinks ensue.
On the surface, Dumb & Dumber sounds exactly like what its title would suggest, a stupid film about stupid people doing and saying stupid things, something that can get awfully tedious awfully fast. But films like Adam McKay’s collaborations with Will Ferrell and television shows like The Simpsons and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have proven that there is an art to writing dumb characters, and Dumb & Dumber proves that too. Many of the shenanigans that the Farrellys and co-screenwriter Bennett Yellin have Harry and Lloyd get into are so creative in their increasing foolishness that they could only have been conceived by intelligent filmmakers.
Of course, it greatly benefits from Carrey and Daniels’ brilliant, go-hard-or-go-home performances. These two hit the exact right notes in terms of their line delivery and their chemistry is just fantastic. You easily believe that these two are the dearest of friends and they can’t help but come across as endearing, regardless of how much trouble they leave in their wake or even what kind of trouble. Even with how cartoonish things get (including perhaps the funniest portrayal of explosive diarrhea ever captured on film), the Farrellys still find a way to ground their characters, with a major highlight being Lloyd’s speech about how he’s tired of being stuck in a rut and feeling like a nobody. Dumb & Dumber is a near-masterclass in cinematic idiocy.
In 1996, the Farrellys followed that up with Kingpin, about a talented young bowler whose career comes to an end when he loses his hand after being persuaded by pompous egomaniac Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray) to hustle local amateurs. Seventeen years later and now an alcoholic salesman, Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) decides to become the manager for a promising new talent, an Amish man named Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). While the screenplay is credited to television veterans Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan, this still retains the goofy charm that the Farrellys brought to Dumb & Dumber, and dare I say it, I think it’s perhaps even better. It’s a shame that this bombed so badly when it premiered, but it’s thankfully found its audience over the years, and it deserved to.
Structurally, it’s very much a formulaic sports comedy, but it’s a real testament to the Farrellys’ direction and the cast’s great performances that it still manages to hit a strong 7/10 split between open-hearted sincerity and side-splitting raunch. Like Carrey and Daniels in Dumb & Dumber, Harrelson and Quaid make for a great comedic pairing here, their chemistry only getting better as the film progresses and their timing sublime. In lesser hands, Quaid’s Ishmael would’ve just been another tired Amish stereotype, but the way Quaid plays it entirely straight and performs it with a more subtle approach makes him easily the film’s most lovable character. Harrelson also scores a lot of big laughs while also wonderfully getting across the pathos of his character and just how he got this way in life.
Even in terms of basic formal craft, the Farrellys — reteaming with cinematographer Mark Irwin — step up their game here, with much stronger shot composition and lighting than in Dumb & Dumber, as Irwin’s widescreen imagery complements the energy and glamor of the sport. One of my favorite examples of this is a quick montage set to the wonderful Electric Light Orchestra song Showdown, as we see Murray’s Big Ern further showing off his bloated sense of self-importance as he bowls. Murray is without a doubt the MVP of the cast and his character’s hair getting wilder as he rolls the ball and prances around like a fool still makes for some of the funniest images I’ve ever seen.
1998 saw the Farrellys at what the majority consider to be their peak. There’s Something About Mary is both their most acclaimed, fondly remembered work and their biggest, most popular hit to date, unleashing a new wave of gross-out comedies in the years since that included the likes of American Pie and Road Trip. Its story tells of Ted Stroehmann (Stiller), a young man all too excited to go to the prom with sweetheart Mary Jensen (Diaz) until a comically unfortunate zipper accident puts a stop to that opportunity. 13 years pass and Ted can’t help but still obsess over her, so he hires P.I. Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down so he can reconnect with her. Unfortunately for Ted, he finds himself having to compete with Pat, Dom (Chris Elliott), and Tucker (Lee Evans) for her affections.
In the current day and age, There’s Something About Mary doesn’t seem especially raunchy, as many of its gags have become ingrained in our popular culture, but don’t let that diminish its sheer power. Even after 25 years, the ways in which the Farrellys revel in bad taste like nobody’s business are guaranteed to leave you clutching at your chest, trying to catch your breath from laughing so thoroughly. Keith David questioning how Ted “got the beans above the frank” will never not kill me. Pat lacing a dog with speed and subsequently trying to revive him with CPR and electrical shocks, complete with accidentally setting it on fire, is gloriously twisted. Of course, who could forget the hysterically grotesque hair gel scene?
With all that being said, the film is elevated to a new level if you look at it not just as a mere gross-out comedy but as a perverse, effectively morbid examination of toxic sexual insecurity and male psychosis. Throughout, we see that these men competing for Mary’s love are some of the most pathetic losers on the face of the planet, taking advantage of her naïveté and resorting to manipulation and even stalking to achieve their petty, shallow goal, and to see them repeatedly miss the mark is what makes it all so funny. Yet there’s still a sweet side to it all too, with Ted learning not to let his shortcomings and his history of embarrassments, sexual or otherwise, define who he is as a person, and there’s a sincerity in how it’s presented that doesn’t make it feel cheap or unearned.
The Forgotten Relics
In 2000, the Farrellys reunited with Carrey for Me, Myself & Irene, about Rhode Island state trooper Charlie Baileygates, who has a psychotic breakdown from years of suppressing his rage and being taken advantage of by the people around him. It turns out that Charlie has dissociative identity disorder, thus said break unleashes another personality within him: Hank Evans, a total sleaze with an abusive, violent mean streak. Suffice it to say, this film is certainly not the one to watch if you’re looking for a realistic, insightful portrayal of what it’s like to live with DID, especially as its look at the subject is outdated. But as a comedic look at what happens when a nice, timid person is pushed too far past the breaking point, I’d say Me, Myself & Irene definitely gets the job done.
Carrey’s way with physical comedy is simply stunning in this film, perfectly capturing both the endearing everyman that is Charlie and the psychotic predator that is Hank. This dual role gives him a great opportunity to further broaden his range as an actor and he takes full advantage of it at each and every turn. Carrey is expertly aided by Renée Zellweger, who you can tell is having a ball playing off of Carrey. As the titular Irene, Zellweger does a great job at portraying just how way-over-her-head this woman feels, exasperated at trying to navigate between when Hank takes over from Charlie and vice versa throughout their journey.
The following year, the Farrellys helmed the live-action segments of the animated family comedy Osmosis Jones, in which the titular white blood cell (Chris Rock) who reluctantly teams up with cold pill Drix (David Hyde Pierce) to prevent the sinister virus Thrax (Laurence Fishburne) from killing their human host Frank (Murray). When purely animated, Osmosis Jones is a hoot, having a lot of fun with its imaginative environments and playing around with buddy cop clichés in a way that’s standard but still enjoyable thanks to its characters, visuals, and voice talent. However, it falls short specifically because of the live-action portion, as a potentially heartfelt story about a father struggling with his health and mending his relationship with his daughter is rendered flat by the workmanlike laziness of the humor and Murray’s terrible performance, his zombie-like turn making his lead almost completely unsympathetic.
Later that year, the Farrellys helmed Shallow Hal, about a man (Jack Black) who’s hypnotized to see women’s inner beauty. With this in mind, he sees his lovely new girlfriend Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) as supermodel-thin, but in reality, she’s obese. There’s definitely hilarious moments present in it and the romantic chemistry between Black and Paltrow is surprisingly very strong, but for as well-intentioned as it is, its failure is in living up to its title, being overly reliant on gags that go out of their way to degrade the very people it claims to be championing. This isn’t to say that you can’t ever make jokes about fat people, but when your only joke most of the time is solely them being fat, it just feels lazy and like it’s going against the message you aim to promote.
In 2003, the Farrellys quickly creatively rebounded with Stuck on You, a comedy about conjoined twins Bob (Matt Damon) and Walt Tenor (Greg Kinnear), who operate a burger joint in their Massachusetts hometown. But in contrast to the shy Bob, Walt fancies himself an actor, thus the duo travel to Hollywood so Walt can make his dream come true, even scoring the co-leading role on a potential hit television crime drama starring Cher. Despite the gimmickiness of the concept, what makes Stuck on You such a likable watch is in the Farrellys’ more laid-back approach to the story and humor, relying much less frequently on gross-out shenanigans.
While these brothers being conjoined are the source of many jokes (with my personal favorite being a nightclub fight scene set to the Van McCoy banger The Hustle), they’re never reduced to the butt of those jokes. The Farrellys never portray them as freaks of nature, but as regular, hard-working people, just like us, and the sibling chemistry between Damon and Kinnear is top-notch throughout. The story also functions as a fascinating meta-textual critique of how the Hollywood system shuns differently-abled people in the industry, whether it be cruel mistreatment, turning them a blind eye, or performatively praising them while doing nothing to help them out or truly give them a shot.
2005 saw the release of their romantic comedy Fever Pitch, about Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon), a high school math teacher obsessed with the Boston Red Sox who starts going out with workaholic business consultant Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore), and ends up struggling with choosing between the team he adores and the woman he loves. The great irony about Fever Pitch is that this was a mere work-for-hire job for the Farrellys, only coming onboard at the last minute after several others either dropped out (Jay Russell, Shawn Levy, Brian Robbins) or were previously considered (P.J. Hogan, Mira Nair, Luke Greenfield), and yet I personally feel that the finished product is their best, most human work by far.
Like Stuck on You, this is significantly less reliant on their trademark gross-out humor, and even the one instance of it present, during a first date gone awry, is kept off-screen. There’s a real maturity to the filmmaking here that I’m not accustomed to from these directors, greatly aided by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel’s sweet, witty script, a remake of the 1997 film of the same name that was in turn based on Nick Hornby’s novel. Barrymore has never been more adorable than as the kind-hearted, strong-willed yet exhausted Lindsey, while Fallon as Ben channels his inner Tom Hanks to make for an appealing leading man, often more restrained in his approach to comedy than we’re used to seeing from him on Saturday Night Live and really selling it during more dramatic moments.
Beyond being an effortlessly pleasing rom-com, Fever Pitch is also a great, insightful look at the nature of die-hard sports fandom and a compelling examination of the struggle over what we’re willing to lose and what we’re willing to keep when it comes to compromise in a relationship. After all, relationships in and of themselves are about compromise on a fundamental level. The arc Ben goes through, from worshiping the Red Sox at their altar to being willing to sacrifice the things he treasures the most if it means he can stay with the one person he loves more than anybody, is executed with such remarkable compassion and thoughtfulness that makes its culmination all the bigger a crowd-pleaser.
The Dark Times
After successfully remaking one film, the Farrellys tried their hand at another, reteaming with Stiller for a hard-R reimagining of Elaine May’s brilliant 1972 comedy The Heartbreak Kid, flipping the switch on the original film’s premise by having its protagonist Eddie Cantrow marry what seems to be the perfect woman, Lila (Malin Akerman), who turns out to not be so perfect during their honeymoon, where he falls for a comparatively more average woman in the form of the otherwise attractive Miranda (Michelle Monaghan). May’s film, boasting a killer script by Neil Simon and a pitch-perfect lead performance from Charles Grodin, is impossible to top, but there’s still potential for a sharp, subversive dark comedy here, potential that sadly never goes fulfilled.
Beyond entirely missing the point behind May’s classic (especially when it comes to the characterization of Lila, which is insanely egregious here), The Heartbreak Kid is still a dud when judged on its own terms. Throughout, the Farrellys dumb down the characters and the situations to an obnoxious degree that is barely humorous. Despite Stiller’s committed performance, he doesn’t imbue his misogynistic, narcissistic, self-pitying tool of a character with enough charm to make him worth spending over an hour and a half following. Even the Farrellys’ return to edgier raunchy humor just feels stale this time around, often getting shockingly mean-spirited at times, and whatever commentary or satire this film does suggest, I’m truly certain is entirely by accident. Grodin, Simon, and Bruce Jay Friedman are all spinning furiously in their graves.
The Farrellys then tried to replicate their success with There’s Something About Mary yet again with the 2011 comedy Hall Pass, about sex-obsessed best friends Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) who are given a “hall pass” from their respective wives Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) that allows them one week off from their difficult marriages to do whatever — and sleep with whoever — they want without any sort of consequences. Again, like their take on The Heartbreak Kid, this is a killer hook for a sex comedy, something that could deliver tenfold on raunch while balancing that out with wit and insight, but again, the Farrellys never realize the potential they have at their disposal.
Even with a fantastic ensemble of actors who have proven enormously successful with comedic performances, the key reason why Hall Pass feels so dead on arrival is that nearly every member of the cast is just going through the motions, with no real commitment to the bit like in past Farrelly comedies. It also doesn’t help that the comedy is primarily a tired collection of overly sophomoric, misguided, often aggressively frat bro-esque gags that land with an instant thud, some of them blatant recycled from their earlier work. A gag in which Richard Jenkins points to a woman at a club and comments on how she surrounds herself with less physically attractive women to make herself look like a “10” in comparison is the retread of Shallow Hal that no one asked for.
In 2012, the Farrellys finally brought their long-gestating passion project The Three Stooges to the silver screen, with disastrous results. The plot follows Curly (Will Sasso), Larry (Sean Hayes), and Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) getting into a variety of screwy hijinks as they try to save their childhood orphanage. This is the kind of simple story that the original Stooges could’ve pulled off in their sleep, but the Farrellys’ execution of this narrative is bafflingly poor. In interviews, you get the sense that they have a great knowledge and love for the Stooges and what makes them so funny, but despite the cast throwing themselves into these roles, that passion never translates on-screen, and as a fan of the Stooges, it is a deeply disheartening experience.
Did you ever want to see the Stooges interact with the guys from Jersey Shore? Did you feel that the Stooges’ slapstick needed an overbearing musical score to “aid” it? Did you pine for the Stooges to spray each other with the urine of newborns? Did you want the Stooges to be accompanied by a deathly dull series of needlessly convoluted subplots, some of which are reheated leftovers from Dumb & Dumber? Some of these decisions feel like studio mandates, while the rest feel like half-hearted screenwriting. The Farrellys’ flat and sterile approach to the filmmaking here also works against the Stooges’ rapid-fire slapstick comedy, making it look and feel slow and clumsy instead of quick and energized, which is perhaps the biggest crime of all.
After briefly going solo to produce and co-direct the infamously reviled 2013 anthology Movie 43, Peter reunited with Bobby in 2014 for the first — and so far, last — sequel of their career, Dumb & Dumber To. After sitting out on the woeful 2003 prequel Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, the Farrellys return to reclaim their creation, with this follow-up once again following Harry and Lloyd, searching for the former’s long-lost daughter in order to obtain a new kidney for him. In the 20 years that passed by since the original film, these two have certainly gotten dumber. What they unfortunately haven’t gotten, though, is funnier.
This sits right alongside The Three Stooges as without a doubt the most titanic, tragic disappointment of their career, and it pains me to say that. Carrey and Daniels still have good chemistry, which easily puts this above the aforementioned prequel, but it has nothing else going for it aside from them. The large majority of the gags are rehashed from the earlier film, while the rest of the jokes are either eye-rollingly retrograde in their attitudes, so juvenile that only small children would laugh at them, or unexpectedly cruel in a way that completely misses why the original was so endearing. The production values are also atrocious here, as the Farrellys — for whatever reason — insist on director of photography Matthew F. Leonetti lighting it like a sitcom, giving it a cheap, ugly digital look that’s more befitting of a Universal 1440 production.
So What Now?
Although they would work together on TV shows like Loudermilk and The Now and the upcoming family fantasy comedy Dear Santa, in the years since Dumb & Dumber To, the Farrellys have mostly gone solo. Bobby would helm eight episodes of Trailer Park Boys and make his solo feature directorial debut on Champions, another effort to highlight the importance of hiring differently-abled actors for a film about the subject. Peter would try his hand at more serious fare with the Best Picture-winning Green Book, a feel-good road trip drama about race relations and why racism is bad that discusses the subject in the most simplistic and wishy-washy way possible, and The Greatest Beer Run Ever, a direct-to-streaming Vietnam-based adventure which seems to have already been forgotten about by the general public.
Peter then directed two episodes of Bob Odenkirk’s short-lived AMC series Lucky Hank and returned to raunchy R-rated comedy with Ricky Stanicky, which I feel is the worst film of the year so far. Aside from Dear Santa — which he co-wrote, but Bobby directed by himself — in the can, Peter has two projects lined up: an action comedy entitled Balls Up, starring Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser and scripted by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and I Play Rocky, a biopic about Sylvester Stallone and his efforts to get Rocky made the way he wants it to be made. Based on their 17-year-long downhill slope, I’m not particularly ecstatic for their upcoming work. Maybe one day the Farrelly brothers will surprise us and unleash something truly great again, but until that day comes, I’ll just sit here like a poor, wrinkly man in a retirement home and go on about how good they used to be back in the old days.
