The Farrelly brothers can't help it, they get these ideas, cheerfully crude and way over the line. Nothing delights this writing-directing team more than making audiences laugh hard at what conventional good taste says isn't even worth a smile. With "There's Something About Mary," Peter and Bobby Farrelly have hit their own kind of jackpot.
An outrageous goofball farce, "There's Something About Mary" is a giddy symphony of rude and raucous low humor. Co-directors who shared the writing credit with Ed Decter & John L. Strauss, the Farrellys here show a gift not just for finding humor where others have feared to look but for presenting it in a way that is surprisingly close to irresistible.
The Farrellys first made a splash with the Jim Carrey-starring "Dumb and Dumber" and the bowling-themed "Kingpin." With "Mary's" story of a woman everyone falls in love with, they display a sharpened ability to make comic situations build and build. Several of the picture's more out-there sequences, like a desperate attempt to electroshock a dog back to life and a man's dreadful accident with a pants zipper, benefit from how laughs are structured to build and build on each other.
"There's Something About Mary" also displays the Farrellys' most paradoxical quality, their good-natured innocence amid all the bad taste. This enables them to blithely make light of a whole range of potentially offensive comic subjects, like the gaffes of mentally challenged individuals, the pitfalls of masturbation and the travails of people on crutches, without giving major offense.
The Farrellys have a secret weapon, this time around, in its star, Cameron Diaz. A natural comic talent and a major asset in every film she's been in, from successes like "My Best Friend's Wedding" to misfires like "A Life Less Ordinary," Diaz is irreplaceable here. More than being completely believable as the delight of all eyes, her intrinsic, knockout wholesomeness puts a Good Housekeeping seal on the raunchy proceedings, as well as keeping the film alive during those moments when it raggedly slows down to catch its breath.
Diaz's co-stars are just as well cast and just as funny, though both come to humor from different starting points. Although Ben Stiller has done drama, he's mostly known for his impeccable comedy work in movies like 1996's "Flirting With Disaster" and his own "Reality Bites." Matt Dillon has been thought of mostly for serious roles, but the growing list of comedies he's improved ("The Flamingo Kid," "To Die For," "In & Out") reveal him to be surprisingly gifted at deadpan humor.
