Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Dan Aykroyd, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Nick Swardson

Directed by: Dennis Dugan

Warner Brothers

The Official Site of Chuck and Larry

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In order to make sure his kids are able to collect benefits after his death, Larry (Kevin James) is going to have to get married. With no one else he can trust the life of his children to, the widower turns to the womanizer (best friend/fellow firefighter Chuck (Adam Sandler) to be his savior. What else are friends for?

Fraud apparently as in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry these two friends begin a lie that attracts trouble from government, strange looks from their friends, and various other sitcom-esque situations ripe for comedy. Two men marrying and pretending to be gay for the sake of their family is a simple enough premise. Until you actually start making the movie about two idiots pretending to be something their not. What we get is an endless stream of gay jokes from ignorant buffoons and an illogical train wreck of an ending. But despite that, Chuck and Larry somehow manages to be one of the funnier movies of the year.

I’m not kidding. Chuck and Larry hits every gay stereotypes imaginable. Lisping accents, obsessions with sex, even dropping the soap in the locker room. It’s sad. What makes it worse is that I was still laughing right along with it. It’s like hearing why the chicken crossed the road for the bazillionth time and you find yourself laughing harder than you ever had before. But the laughs in this movie are genuine, big and plentiful even if they are rooted in immature schoolyard slander.

While there are plenty of gay themed jokes, at no time are the jokes directly at the expense of gay people. More often the butt of the joke ends up being the ill informed straight men making assumptions about a community they don’t understand. That would have been fine had the movie properly given us a glimpse of that world, but all we get are more exaggerated characterizations. What we do see of the gay community comes from the boys’ gay rights lawyer, played by the absolutely gorgeous Jessica Biel, and her gay-as-the-day brother, Nick Swardson (One of the top three funniest men on the planet in my opinion). The true nature of that world is still funny but a obviously incomplete.

If making fun of gays was the true intention of Chuck and Larry you would have seen boycotts springing up all over the nation the week this movie was released. Thankfully the movie takes hatred towards gays very seriously resulting in a couple of scenes of confrontation that somehow are actually kind of funny too.

When James comically tackles a fellow parent that makes it clear how uncomfortable he is with Larry coaching little league or coming along for the Boy Scout camping trips – it’s funny. A serious situation is handled with heart and humor at the same time. Not something easily pulled off.

I wondered if it made me a bad person for laughing at how controversial, intentionally uninformed, and even lowbrow the comedy in this movie is. But even if it’s coming from a somewhat naïve place the jokes are delivered with good intentions and better timing. The Sandler clan still knows how to make an audience roar.

The film conclusion chooses not to just target one group of people but instead mankind as a whole, challenging our collective intelligence in this astonishingly awful, glossed over disaster of a finish. It’s one big circus of confusions as the filmmakers try desperately to turn these lying criminals into redeemable friends so that they can narrowly escape with a happy ending. But there is no happy ending. It’s impossible. The hole they’ve dug themselves is just too deep. These characters have lied to their dearest friends, budding love interest, the United States government and the entire gay community. There’s no way they could have admitted the truth and still gotten off Scott free with every one of those groups.

What’s most offensive to me is that these characters become icons in the gay community even though they USED their way of life to cheat the system. It makes me wonder if GLAAD, or any gay person for that matter, were ever questioned on what their reaction might be to this backhanded compliment. I mean, if Chuck and Larry had pretended to be black to share benefits would they have been able to get off so easily? Only in the movies.

In a perfect world the ending should work. It should work because their fraud was done with good intentions. Larry just wanted to make sure his kids were OK, and Chuck just wanted to be there for his best friend. They were doing the “right� thing, and even if it doesn’t do so in the most graceful way, the movie does the “right� thing too. There are a lot of ways to convey a message. Chuck and Larry uses an awkward approach but the message of friendship, tolerance and respect is still crystal clear. It’s even targeted at a frat boy audience that might not be aware of the lesson they’ve learned until it’s too late. Can we fault the message for it’s sloppy delivery? It would be a lot easier to do so if it wasn’t so funny.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10 There’s a lot to say about this movie that goes far beyond its controversy. I wish there were more room here because there are some nice gags and guest appearances that deserve more attention than who the story might be offending. Judging by the box office it looks like not too many people were upset about it.

We covered a little more of the movies highs and lows over at the Triple Feature. Click episode 30 to hear more.

I had a great time with Chuck and Larry but after the two-punch of Hotrod and Superbad it’s clear that this latest Sandler outing doesn’t quite measure up. It’s plenty funny but in comparison to the passion, energy and sheer irreverence of the next generation of Adam Sandlers, it’s hard to call Chuck and Larry a standout on the year’s comedy landscape.

This movie is lots of fun, but if this summer has taught me anything it’s that there are bigger laughs to be had just over the horizon.

For my fellow Sandler fans that enjoy big laughs and the mere glimmer of sweetness in its storytelling, Chuck and Larry is a worthy addition to your home library. While the clumsy ending won’t make any more sense logistically in repeat viewings the laughs will, as the more you watch it, the harder your laugh, and you’ll even find more things to laugh at. It’s just that kind of movie. Happy Madison always does a bang up job with production quality and bonus features, but it’s the continued and unexpected laughs that keep me buying Sandler’s movies on DVD.

The Transporter - At the end of July when Chuck and Larry hit theaters it was a tough time for the Gay community on the Silver screen. One of their major icons of the modern era was now being played by toe tapping, Scientologist John Travolta (eerily well actually in this summers Hairspray) and Chuck and Larry just reminded us all that most straight men still have preconceived, naïve opinions about homosexuality. I thought I’d offer up a recommendation of a movie that embraces the gay community without keeping it at arms length. The Transporter. Enjoy the oiled up action.

Putting the famous T-shirt phrase on a tombstone is actually something I came up with last year when Yeo and I were driving down to her parent’s house in Virginia. We were caught in a huge snowstorm and her sister called to see why we were so late. Yeo was being dramatic about the severity of the weather and said something like “Ok, but just so you know, when I die I want it to say ‘died on the side of the road after driving too fast in order to get to her parents house on time.’ on my tombstone. “

When she asked me what I wanted I spat back “I’m with stupid.� And I enjoyed the gag infinitely more than she did. But she was jealous when she saw I had given Phil the honor in the comic. Maybe I can get the arrow pointing both ways.

If you look closely the date of death on my tombstone does not say 2007. It did at one point but the whole thing just felt like bad luck. Like an invitation for trouble, so I changed it to something more outlandish. Let’s just call it a typo on the part of the stone carver. We’ll also assume that Yeo got a great deal on it.

Happy anniversary to Hobotrashcan.com! Joel and the crew over at Hobotrashcan are a great group and have been really supportive to me over the past couple years. Seriously, have a look around their site – I’ve got like a dozen commissioned illustrations up over there. And while you’re looking around be sure to check out some of the killer content from the columnists including reviews, interviews with major celebrities like Bruce Campbell and Jonah Hill, and tons more!

In today’s slowly unraveling coverage of our trip to Wizard World Chicago a couple weeks ago I wanted to put my focus on the great folks at Biscuit Press who not only were as sweet as can be but were also cool enough to include us in one of their strips. Apparently Phil and I are ten kinds of awesome. That’s a link to Random Assembly by Samantha who also did an amazing original TvB sketch for me and let us take a picture of her wearing the Bunny shirt she bought. I’ve been addicted to her strip since we got back, and you should start getting addicted to it too.

We also met Alex from F.A.R.T.S. and Lee from Better You Than Me. Both of those strips are also addict worthy. Lee has this whole Penny Arcade vibe going on. Really sharp, really clean, a lot of fun to read.

The Biscuit Press crew was very cool to us during the convention and I wanted to return the favor, say thanks, and hopefully expose some new people to their beautiful corner of the Internet. All the best guys!