There is something about it that feels duplicitous and I left the theatre mad. Sandler has done something ingenuous. The pimply teenage boys love gay jokes. Sandler knew he would get great mileage from playing a flagrantly heterosexual homophobe surrounded by men dressed as butterflies and young sissies in tap shoes. And the weekend box office results prove it -- Sandler beat Potter this weekend -- $34.8 million to $32.2 million.
Despite her initial disgust with this movie, Ms Garry claims that this film is really a great work of cinematic art thanks to her special glasses:
But here's the ingenuous part. There's a second movie hiding in there but you can only see it if you wear your special gay decoder glasses.
There is the hilarious movie in which Adam Sandler plays a total sexist pig who agrees to pretend to be gay to help out his friend who needs pension benefits. That film uses words like "butt pirate" to great comic effect.
Then there is the film you can see only with the special glasses. In this one, the premise is the same but the sexist pig is changed by the experience. He reaches a greater understanding of issues facing the gay community as well as a greater understanding of what it really means to be in a relationship. In this version of the film, there are sweet and preachy moments and you must ignore the use of words like "butt pirate."
Apparently the majority of other reviewers are not wearing those special gay decoder glasses since their reviews have been mostly unflattering such as this one by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone:
Say it isn't so. Not that Adam Sandler as Chuck and Kevin James as Larry play idiot hetero fireman who fake being gay for health benefits. I mean that Sideways writers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor actually contributed to a script that trots out every fag joke -- yes, even dropping the soap -- and then tells us how wrong it is to laugh. No comedy this year can beat this dud for mealy-mouthed hypocrisy.
Perhaps Mr. Travers would learn to appreciate this movie if he borrows a pair of special gay decoder glasses from Ms Garry. Of course, the liberals always seem to be wearing those special glasses from the movie, They Live, in which the main character is able to see that successful conservatives are really evil aliens. Those are the same glasses which enable liberals to see that 9/11 was really a U.S. government plot, that Karl Rove controls all aspects of our society, and that the new Wal-Mart stores are really future detention centers in which to incarcerate "progressives."
