I Now Pronounce You A Bad Afterschool Special
By David Benoit on Jul. 22, 2007
Take as many gay clichés as you can think of, mix in a lot of different attitudes towards the subject, and add just a pinch of humor… and you have the recipe for “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”.
I just didn’t understand this movie. It seemed like it was funnier as a trailer. It tried too hard to be a movie with a message and came off like a bad Afterschool special. The story seemed to be a complete stretch and the humor felt forced. Don’t get me wrong, there were some funny parts. But by the time they got to the locker room shower scene, the dropped soap joke seemed to just be the icing on the stereotype cake.
The characters were poorly developed to the point I couldn’t believe that girl-crazed playboy Chuck would go from being against the scheme to sharing the same bed with Larry the first night they lived together. Jessica Biel was funny, but fairly naïve. Ving Rhames shows up for 30 seconds at the beginning of the movie and falls off the radar until halfway through. By the time he showed up again, I’d forgotten his name was even in the opening credits.
The usual cast of Sandler favorite cameos filed through including a couple funny moments from David Spade and a surprise visit from Dave Matthews. The “Oh Brother!” cameo goes to a recently outed celeb who shows up for the last 2 minutes of the movie (just long enough to remind you he’s gay now), but gets a higher credit than Larry’s kids who were in the entire movie.
If you want to laugh at these guys, I’d suggest pulling out your copies of “The Wedding Singer” and “King of Queens”. I kept wishing Denis Leary would transfer to their firehouse and rescue this movie.
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