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Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
**
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Buena Vista International on May 26, 2000; certificate
15; 88 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Mike Mitchell; produced by
Barry Bernadi, Sid Ganis.
Written by Harris Goldberg, Rob Schneider.
Photographed by Peter Lyons Collister; edited by George Bowers,
Lawrence Jordan.
CAST.....
Rob Schneider..... Deuce Bigalow
William Forsythe..... Detective Chuck Fowler
Eddie Griffin..... T.J. Hicks
Arija Bareikis..... Kate
Oded Fehr..... Antoine Laconte
Gail O'Grady..... Claire
A lot of the reviews of "Deuce Bigalow:
Male Gigolo" have laid the blame for its failure on the star, Rob
Schneider. But it's not his fault that the film is obnoxious, it's the situations
that his character is put in. Schneider plays the eponymous Deuce, a pond
cleaner asked by a gigolo to mind his sick fish when he is away on business
in Switzerland. He warns Deuce in no uncertain terms that he must not mess
up his beautiful apartment, which of course Deuce does almost immediately,
by letting things smash on the floor and getting the place flooded. To raise
some money to replace the damaged property, Deuce contacts the gigolo's pimp
(T.J. Hicks), who helps him become a "man-whore" (this phrase is used every
two minutes, as if we'd forgotten it, and will laugh every time). The comedy
of the movie is intended to come from the assortment of freaks Deuce has
to date, including a lady who keeps passing out, a 7-foot giant, an amazingly
obese slut with a man's voice and a usually sweet girl who has obscene
outbursts.
The reason Deuce can't attract choice clientele
is he's supposed to be an unattractive slob. Schneider has an awfully well-toned,
hairless body to be playing such an undesirable, so I guess the movie must
be set in Los Angeles, where almost everyone is obsessed with physical
perfection, and anyone except the most die-hard health freak is an outcast.
Not that "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" would play well in L.A. -- its jokes
are far too politically incorrect. As soon as Deuce begins his new job, for
example, he's having a fistfight with a woman. And then there are the
inappropriate pot shots that the screenplay takes at narcoleptics, the
overweight, the disabled, etc.
The portrayals of all these people are too broad
to be convincing, and so they're not sharp or funny, they're just offensive.
The fat woman hides pizzas and chicken in her dress. And the Tourette's Syndrome
sufferer doesn't have proper mood swings, but simply starts screaming obscenities
out of the blue, in the middle of regular conversations. That's such a
transparent attempt to be funny; a calm, realistic portrayal of a gigolo
dating a Tourette's patient would be infinitely more entertaining. Remember
the scene in Woody Allen's "Celebrity" where the polymorphously perverse
supermodel caused Kenneth Branagh to crash his car? That took time to develop,
and played out seriously, even though it was a slapstick situation, and was
an example of how to do this sort of thing better.
"Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" is easy to watch
because of Schneider, who is a likeable comic hero, with goofy posture, wide
ol' puppy-dog eyes and a cutely timid voice. The film doesn't work, though,
even though the premise has potential. It's the kind of thing that has to
be credible to make us laugh, and who could believe in any movie where someone
puts a cheese sandwich in a toaster?
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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