Stuck on You

Review by: Alysa Salzberg
(AlysaSalzberg@TheCinemaSource.com)

As pop queen Madonna and ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus prove, change is a part of life. In fact, if you look further into Madonna and leave that old Greek guy behind, you’ll see that change is often the only way to have a good, long life in the entertainment world. It seems that brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly have been listening to their Madonna lately – or else they’ve been poring over philosophy tomes. Either way, what you’ll find in Stuck on You is not what you’ve come to expect from the typical Farrelly Brothers movie.

About twenty minutes into the picture, you might start asking yourself, “Where are the fart jokes? Is someone going to throw up soon?” Something like that. From Dumb and Dumber to Shallow Hal, the Farrelly Brothers have delivered movies laced with such fun gross-out gags and images. But Stuck on You is pretty much devoid of them – a fact that seems surprising, not only because of the filmmakers involved, but also because of the premise of the film. The movie gives us the tale of shy, panic-prone Bob (Matt Damon, having a great time for the audience and for himself) and charismatic Walt (Greg Kinnear, delightful and delighted to be there), a pair of conjoined twins – brothers literally joined at the hip. Walt and Bob have sworn their unusual condition would never hold them back from doing what they want, and this seems to have worked; in their hometown of Martha’s Vineyard, they are beloved by the locals, own their own fast food restaurant, star in sports events, competitions, and even plays (well, Walt acts, but stage fright-stricken Bob merely hangs on, sweating bullets). But one day, Walt tells Bob he wants to go to California to see if he can make it as an actor. A little persuasion later, there they are.

Now, it would seem that so far, we are still in Farrelly country. A pair of friends (one brown-haired, one shaggy blonde, natch) go on a road trip, hoping to find a better place. Yeah, we’ve done that before. But that’s where it stops. Throughout the film, romances come up, love interests appear and stay, yet there is no fighting between our main characters about these ladies. The external conflict is put even further on the back burner than usual – this isn’t a plot-driven movie so much as one about the dynamics and differences between Walt and Bob.

The Farrelly’s are often dually praised and reviled for their portrayals of people with some kind of physical or mental abnormality. For the paradigm of these arguments, look no further than the Brothers’ last movie, Shallow Hal. In this flick, obese people are at once seen with pity and laughed at. Yet in the end, as the film’s defenders point out, Hal contains a message about acceptance and unconditional love. ...