The Heartbreak Kid: The flip side of Wedding Crashers

The Heartbreak Kid is good movie with a bad trailer, resulting in a delightful surprise in squirmy humor.

Ben Stiller is Eddie, a sporting goods store owner who is unhappy with his single life, but scared of commitment. His father (played by real-life father Jerry Stiller) is pushs him to enjoy being single while his best friend gives him lousy advice on why he should marry. After being single too long, he has to defend his sexuality at his ex-fiance's wedding, then finds someone and gets rushed into tying the knot. The "special someone" is Lila (Malin Akerman who played another weird wife in Harold & Kumar). "Special" is the key word there. She plays a continuingly more and more annoying monster. No surprise, Eddie falls in love with the next girl fit for a romantic comedy, Miranda (Michelle Monaghan from Mission Impossible 3).

The humor can flow easily as every character is outrageous and convincing. Akerman makes being psycho look natural, playing off everything as though it is what everyone does everyday. She makes guys want to avoid commitment. Jerry Stiller's extreme use of bachelorhood, such as asking Eddie to go with him to Vegas to double-bang Klaya Kleevage, would make many guys want to avoid the bachelorhood. Guess why her last name is Kleevage.

Equally helping is Ben Stiller's performance. He doesn't come off as selfish, but as a guy with heart. Stiller's on-screen chemistry with Monaghan and Akerman's psycho tendencies make all the decisions seem natural, and the audience can root for Eddie while he lies through his teeth in between various attempts to go straight.

This is far from the typical romantic comedy. The Farrelly brothers directing brings it a touch of There's Something about Mary, where nothing is sacred. There are infamous sex scenes where Lila is overly aggressive. When Eddie suggests missionary position, she asks, "what's that?" If sex humor is funny, Dane Cook has nothing on the laughing out loud humor of Stiller trying to injoy sex. If the Farrelly brothers were looking for a message pro-premartial sex, they got one.

To change the pace some, Carlos Mencia plays Uncle Tito, an immoral hotel owner offering a change from the usual wiseman advice on love. Whenever something cliche pops up, he turns it around. One aspect I will always appreciate this film for is it never sells itself out for the predictable romance comedy.

Is it entertaining? Yes. There's part There's Something About Mary, part Meet the Parents, and part no-moral Wedding Crashers. If all three of these are your kind of movies, then its the movie for you.

Is it for everyone? No. It's rated R for good reason, specifically strong sexual content, crude humor and language. When the Farrelly brothers make nothing sacred, that means they'll show frontal nudity no one wants to see, mule sex organs, the C-word, plenty of the F-word, and again, while most will find the sex scenes funny, EVERYONE will find them nauseating. They hurt themselves here.

Is it memorable? Almost. Heartbreak took many people to make it work. Farrelly brothers will always be remembered for There's Something About Mary, Stiller will be better remembered for giving awkward looks in Meet the Parents, and cheating and lying was still funnier in Wedding Crashers, where the sex scenes were just as funny and no where near as naseating.

My suggestion? If you like Wedding Crashers, Meet the Parents, and There's Something About Mary then it's worth the drive and admission price. Two out of those three, wait for it to come on DVD. Only one out of those three, watch the censored version when it comes on cable. Next week is a full set of drama and oscar contenders. This may be the only good comedy for awhile.