It's funny in spots if you can tune out the Farrellys' ultra-crass jokes -- along with any memory of the first movie.
The Heartbreak Kid (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:151
Fresh:46
Rotten:105
Average Rating:4.7/10
Consensus: Despite some amiable performances, The Heartbreak Kid is neither as daring nor as funny as the Farrelly Brothers' earlier films.
Runtime: 3 hrs 24 mins
Genre: Comedies
US Box Office: $36,771,343
Synopsis: The Farrelly Brothers add their trademark bounty of bodily functions to this remake of Elaine May's 1972 comedy, THE HEARTBREAK KID. This time around Ben Stiller plays Eddie Cantrow, a 40-year-old... The Farrelly Brothers add their trademark bounty of bodily functions to this remake of Elaine May's 1972 comedy, THE HEARTBREAK KID. This time around Ben Stiller plays Eddie Cantrow, a 40-year-old bachelor who is tired of having his foulmouthed father (Jerry Stiller) and henpecked friend (Rob Corddry) give him a hard time for not being married. So when he meets the seemingly perfect Lila (Malin Ackerman), he decides to marry her--despite knowing her for only six weeks. On their honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, he realizes his mistake when Lila reveals her true colors, which turn out to be quite ugly. While Lila recovers from a sunburn, Eddie meets fellow vacationer Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) and falls in love. He must break the news to both women before they find out the truth. After the more standard romantic comedy of FEVER PITCH, Bobby and Peter Farrelly are back to the gross-out comedy that made them famous in films such as THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. This is the first time they've re-teamed with Stiller since that landmark film, and it proves a far better marriage than Eddie and Lila's. Ackerman may be most famous to date for a small role in HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, but she's fearless in this part. The Farrellys have always been fans of bodily humor, and Ackerman's Lila gets to be the butt of the joke most often, largely thanks to her character's deviated septum. There are several moments here that threaten to top the infamous hair-gel scene in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY as far as groans and giggles go. [More]
Starring: Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Jerry Stiller
Starring: Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Jerry Stiller, Rob Corddry, Carlos Mencia
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Screenwriter: Scot Armstrong, Kevin Barnett, Leslie Dixon, Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Producer: Ted Field, Bradley Thomas
Composer: Brendan Ryan, Bill Ryan
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Reviews for The Heartbreak Kid
In this remake of the 1972 film, the Farrellys -- proud perpetrators of Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary and other jolly assaults on good taste -- turn Neil Simon's script inside out and flog it like a piņata.
The Heartbreak Kid, while not without its share of tiny, ephemeral pleasures, is a surprisingly flat and unamusing comedy.
The lack of creative inspiration is at the root of this Heartbreak Kid's frustrating laziness and junky guffaws.
While the film needs the put-upon Ben Stiller of Flirting With Disaster or There's Something About Mary, it instead gets the recently emerged, more manic version of Stiller, who immediately throws the humor out of balance.
The new version doesn't have any of the ethnic nuance or black-comic nastiness of the earlier one, and the Farrellys miss the opportunity to add their own.
In some ways, the Farrelly brothers' remake of The Heartbreak Kid is better than Elaine May's 1972 comedy. In other ways, not so much.
There's nothing in The Heartbreak Kid that can compare to, say, the hair gel bit from Mary. But there's something to be said for a comedy that derives its laughs the old-fashioned way.
The Heartbreak Kid is a by-the-numbers romantic comedy whose every familiar plot contortion is easily predicted well before it occurs.
This one's all about the big, unbelievable guffaws, of which the movie delivers about a dozen. Some may still call it heresy, but it's nothing to get heartbroken over.
The Farrellys want you to root for Eddie to get what he wants, but you may find that he deserves every bad thing that happens to him.
The Heartbreak Kid unfolds like a typical rom-com with a bad aftertaste.
The Farrelly brothers blow all the good will accumulated in the first half of the movie by taking the humor deeper and deeper into Tedious Cad Land, where Stiller's self-obsessed, nattering guyishness turns pathological and strange.
There are some good laughs to be found here, but you'll need patience to extract them from the filler.
It's heartbreaking enough to witness a shallow remake of a treasured classic, but it's equally depressing to watch comedy masters Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers go so completely off their game.
The Farrellys, who with There's Something About Mary helped lay the groundwork for the mixture of raunchiness and heart that Judd Apatow has perfected, seem painfully dated here.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly make a half-hearted attempt to reclaim the arena of raunch with their remake of the 1972 comedy The Heartbreak Kid.
An outrageously hilarious and RAUNCHY comedy that creates so many huge - and we mean humungous - laughs you will probably have to see it more than once just to catch all the dialogue.
Latest News for The Heartbreak Kid
March 04, 2008:
Rush Hour 3 Takes '07 DVD Rental Crown
It may not have been quite the box-office phenomenon that its predecessors were -- and critics may have disliked it enough to keep it down at 20 percent on the Tomatometer --... More...
November 28, 2007:
Mr. Skin Reveals Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2007
In an age of fast-rising Hollywood production costs, the young actresses who strive to keep movie budgets down -- specifically in the wardrobe department -- deserve to be saluted. More...
October 24, 2007:
Farrellys Fight for Three Stooges
The Three Stooges was supposed to be the Farrelly Brothers' next movie after The Heartbreak Kid in the vein of the old Stooges shorts. Sounds like a much better idea than Stuck... More...
October 21, 2007:
Besides the morally-objectionable storyline, the Farrellys are up to their usual tricks. This means they fill the screen with gratuitous nudity, gross-out bodily function humor, graphically-depicted soft porn and meanspirited potshots at assorted ethnic g ![]()
More...
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