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Adam Sandler certainly has his fair share of detractors, but the fact is, like him or loathe him, that he is one of the most consistent headlining stars currently working in Hollywood. When he makes films that appeal to his clearly considerable core audience - that is, teen-friendly comedies rather than more thoughtful and low-key dramatic outings such as the recent Reign Over Me or Spanglish - his movies invariably make at least $120 million in the US and walk off with substantially more in international territories. That's why these films keep getting made despite their inconsistent quality, ranging from likeable successes including 50 First Dates to last year's miserable Click. So, which category does I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry fall into? Well, read the title again and have a guess.
Yup, this is a comedy involving homosexuality. But Sandler has not taken the plunge and actually played a gay man - indeed, the film goes to great and painstaking lengths to underline the fact that HE IS NOT GAY AT ALL, i.e. he scores a hot nurse, simultaneously beds five Hooters girls, and subscribes to copious amounts of top-shelf men's mags. Instead, Sandler plays a guy who is implausibly coerced by the equally heterosexual (well, perhaps not equally; Sandler's obviously the straightest man on the planet) Kevin James into a gay marriage to help the latter's monetary situation in some way, the specifics of which are inconsequential and don't make it any more believable. This inevitably leads to the pair having to pretend to be a couple, with supposedly hilarious consequences. A spanner is thrown into the works when doubts are cast on the partnership's veracity by a characteristically-better-than-the-material Steve Buscemi, leading to Chuck (Sandler) and Larry (James) being introduced to their lawyer, played by Jessica Biel. Sandler understandably falls for her instantly, but she thinks he's gay, which means she's rather more intimate and open with him than she would be otherwise.
The jokes are usual lowest-common-denominator sort of stuff, with fat people, the Japanese (an almost unrecognisable Rob Schneider cameos), and of course, gays all ridiculed to an extent, although it's not nearly as offensive as has been indicated elsewhere, with even a rudimentary pro-gay stance offered by the end. The fact that much of the 'humour' will no doubt insult some people is not really that important - many stand-ups rely on that sort of humour - but the fact that there really aren't many laughs on offer is much more so. Our introduction to these characters, when we see them performing their day jobs as New York firemen, is quite well handled, with budget clearly not a constraint (two scenes set in burning/burnt-out buildings could easily have been condensed into one). As mentioned, laughs are sparse, but it's only when the third act arrives when the problems really mount up and the whole plot collapses under the weight of its own preposterousness. It's really quite hard to believe that Sideways scribes Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor had a hand in writing this.
The summary
Sandler fans wearing their rose-tinted spectacles will probably enjoy Chuck and Larry, but others will find it more of an endurance test. Only worth seeing, at a push, for Jessica Biel and a spectacularly against-type performance from Ving Rhames.
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