By Ellen A. Kim
Story
Gilly Noble (
Chris Klein) is a gentle, innocent chap who works at the animal shelter and dreams of finding his biological mother. When he walks into the local beauty salon, he gets his hair (and ear) chopped by the beautiful Jo (
Heather Graham), who instantly becomes the love of his life. But soon after their engagement, it's revealed that Jo's mother (
Sally Field) is Gilly's as well, subjecting him to every incest joke imaginable. By the time Gilly finds out it was all a mix-up, Jo's already engaged to a shady millionaire (
Eddie Cibrian), so Gilly sets off to stop the wedding with the help of a pilot with no legs (
Orlando Jones).
Acting
Since this movie is produced (but not directed) by
Peter and
Bobby Farrelly and follows in the same vein of their "are-they-really-gonna-go-there" brand of toilet humor, parallels to their massive hit There's Something About Mary are inevitably drawn. But
Chris Klein is no
Ben Stiller, and because Gilly has no comic dimensions of his own (everything just happens to him), he doesn't do much more than make puppy eyes and look shocked.
Graham continues her one-step-forward, two-steps-back career by relying on wide-eyed sympathy glances rather than actual acting.
Sally Field almost escapes wrath by playing gold-digging white trash with true camp -- but we said almost.
Direction
If J.B. Rogers, making his directorial debut, was going for groans rather than laughter, he sure got them. Preview audiences weren't exactly rolling in the aisles when Gilly pieces together a mustachioed disguise from the trash behind Jo's beauty salon, not realizing he's using waxed-off pubic hair. They also didn't really howl with laughter when Gilly somehow loses the engagement ring inside a (really fake-looking) cow's butt and then gets his hand caught inside. The film tries its hardest to cram in all the gags it can in a mercifully short 97 minutes, but forgot to make sure they were funny.