The Farrelly Brothers' Body (dys)functions

by Filipe Furtado

Filipe Furtado is a film critic based in São Paulo. His work appears regularly at Contracampo.

Every film by Peter and Bobby Farrelly after There's Something About Mary was written off as a commercial disappointment. It's as if these filmmakers, who in a certain way left an undeniable mark in contemporary American comedy (it doesn't matter what we think about the films), had completely lost touch with their audiences. Suddenly, their films seemed to become a hindrance at multiplexes (Stuck on You's complete run in São Paulo was exactly three weeks). Stuck on You (and, before it, Shallow Hal) are a natural evolution in the direction they've been developing since Dumb and Dumber, so where does this split with audiences come from? In a certain way, the Farrellys' trajectory resembles that of Jerry Lewis (although it's true that we could make a study about how many inventors of American comedy, from Chaplin to John Landis, ended their careers with their old audiences hostile to them). The comparison is very apt since the Farrellys' and Lewis' cinema, while formally different, both express a similar relationship between the world and their audiences.

For starters, these films play double games. They are very funny, full of jokes made in the spirit of variety humor, something which may go unnoticed thanks to the painless way in which the filmmakers combine them. For two directors who many insist on seeing as a couple of anonymous Hollywood hired guns, the Farrellys have shown a remarkable control over the form of their material. Just look at how Stuck on You carefully postpones the first shot/reverse shot between the two brothers. For a filmmaker who is only interested in illustrating the text, the formal question would never even be raised; while those too in love with technique wouldn't let the first opportunity to make use of them pass them by. But the brothers wait until the moment they believe they have earned the right to make use of the shot/reverse shot, and it has great results.

But their comedies also have a disturbing side. At first, we all thought that this was because they were too gross. To an extent, the image that we have created about the Farrellys never reflected much about what was going on inside the films. Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary may have produced a series of clones where crassness is the prevailing tone, but in their own films this was always balanced by other elements. Not to say that this sort of gross, nearly surreal humor wasn't there. It was, and in some moments it helped create that disturbing feeling, at least in the early films. Now, however, this sort of humor has become so much the rule in recent comedies that it barely seems to have any effect in and of itself (with the exception, of course, of more extreme provocations like Tom Green's Freddie Got Fingered). The Farrellys have been, in their last few films, progressively emphasizing another aspect of their work which was already present from the beginning: the sentimental drama. After all, wasn't Dumb and Dumber already the story of two innocent fools who barely knew the situation that they put themselves into? What makes it a far cry from something like Forrest Gump is that the filmmakers never hide that it's this same innocence that makes them sell a dead parrot to a blind kid.

So Stuck on You is a sentimental comedy. Generally, it's believed that either a filmmaker shows this sort of material in an edifying way, or as a great joke. As the Farrellys do both things, the spectator sometimes feels lost in front of what he sees. This intrusion of drama in the humor is so strong, that even if you believe the film isn't funny, it's hard to deny that the brothers' relationship resounds strongly. But this also has the effect of turning the film's humor into something far weirder, almost as though the spectator isn't sure if he is supposed to laugh or not in certain sequences. There are as many good jokes here as in Dumb and Dumber, but we aren't always comfortable about laughing at them.

But the great disturbing element of Farrellys' cinema is the matter of identification. It's here that the link to Lewis becomes more clear (although that filmmaker/comedian was also a fan of mixing humor and sentimentality). The Farrellys always work inside the tradition of commercial American cinema by making us identify with a character. But they never give us the average guy who reacts to the absurd situations around him that this sort of comedy usually presents us with (just compare Ben Stiller's roles in There's Something About Mary and Meet the Parents). Or better, they completely banish the line between what should be seen as normal or abnormal. The Siamese twins of Stuck on You are well adapted and believed they negotiate all of the problems that their condition may give them, which makes the identification easier. But things aren't as easy as they seem: as much as the brothers understand each other, this is still far from meaning that their problems are solved. Far from that, as the film makes clear Bob's (Matt Damon) discomfort with his own body, and Walt's (Greg Kinnear) difficulties in his attempts to be an actor. Here lies much of the Farrellys' genius. The Siamese twins situation could be easily read as an allegory of any relationship based on co-dependence. But that would be too easy. The film's real interest lies in the feelings of inadequacy that their condition provides (and it's worth remembering that even after they go through the operation, things don't change, as there's effectively no difference between normal and abnormal). It's no surprise that we react badly to Stuck on You; we may be seeing a positive story with a happy ending, but it connects us to our own feelings of inadequacy.

This is when we notice that, in a certain way, we're dealing with a Hollywood-ian - but equally successful - bastard brother of Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. As with Dead Ringers, we are in the terrain of the body's dysfunctions, though seen here through a kind and affirmative filter. It isn't for nothing that Stuck on You with such frequency shows the strangely disjointed body of the twins without shirt (and it's also worth mentioning at this point the wonderful body language of the two leading actors); it's the Farrellys' first 'Scope film (not counting Osmosis Jones), a decision that seems arrived at by their desire to give the brothers as much space as possible. But the horror for the Farrellys isn't exactly in the twins' disjointed body. It's a horror based in rejection: it's the feeling that presents itself in all of their films. It's what the characters always fear. The Farrellys' typical hero is the man who is in constant fear of being rejected by the object of his desires. It's not a feeling easy to identify with, even less so in a pure "entertainment." If most filmmakers usually see two ways to deal with material like Stuck on You, the same is true to most spectators. We either expect to see a sort of freak show, or the opposite version: a film which gives us a chance to exert our good, liberal, politically correct feelings. Instead of that, the filmmakers put us in the position of identifying with those we would prefer to see with derision or pity. A malaise sets inside the image. The body Bob and Walt are stuck with is also ours. There aren't many contemporary American filmmakers this subversive or political.