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Gross gags, weak script prove being moronic is 'A Guy Thing'
Julia Stiles and Jason Lee find romance in 'A Guy Thing'
Diyah Pera/MGM
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
While this past year turned around nicely at the end - thanks to a few brief flashes of brilliant filmmaking flaring up amid the rubble - here comes a movie to drag us back down to earth and remind us how truly bad a film can be.
"A Guy Thing" begins at a bachelor party, where Paul (Jason Lee) is being treated by his buddies to a little premarital debauchery. One of the party's "dancers," Becky (Julia Stiles), bumps into Paul, who laughs at her terrible dancing.
The next morning, he wakes up in bed with Becky and can't remember a thing about the previous night. Just in time, a phone call alerts him to the fact that his fiancee, Karen (Selma Blair) is on her way over.
And that's it. The rest of the story is a seemingly endless array of moronic gags revolving around Paul trying to hide his "unintentional" indiscretion from his bride-to-be. The catch is that Becky turns out to be Karen's cousin and figures into all of the wedding plans - so Paul can't avoid her.
Although we're expected to root for Paul to fall for the flighty, effervescent Becky instead of the safe, shrewish Karen, the amount of chemistry between Becky and Paul can be measured only in subatomic particles.
Becky convinces Paul to break into her ex-boyfriend's house, in which they barely escape his angry dog. Then she makes him drive down a steep hill really fast. And, just like that, Paul realizes how inhibited he is, and recognizes his budding love for this wild new girl in his life.
I'm sorry, but even by the ridiculous Hollywood timetables of a romantic-comedy courtship, this happens way too fast to make any sense. It's like all they had to work with were the scraps of clips from "Meet the Parents" that hit the cutting-room floor - and that director Chris Koch was too lazy to shoot any of the connecting scenes that were supposed to hold them together.
Oh, and the big centerpiece gross-out gags that are supposed to make you shoot popcorn out your nose are: a.) Paul getting crabs, and b.) Paul pretending he has diarrhea.
There's nothing wrong with shocking a little laughter out of your audience - witness, for instance, the comic effects generated from gross gags in "There's Something About Mary" - but these sequences are so clumsily staged that you see the gag coming a mile before it hits.
Unless your hobbies (besides going to the movies) include things such as Civil War surgery re-enactments and taking calculus exams, you are not a true connoisseur of pain and should avoid this movie.
Here's hoping this boat sinks to the bottom with all hands aboard.
| 'A Guy Thing' |
Director: Chris Koch
Stars: Jason Lee, Julia Stiles, Selma Blair
MPAA Rating: PG-13, for language and sexual references
