There's Something About Mary

Details

Back in high school, the geeky Ted Stroehmann somehow managed to land a prom date with the beautiful Mary Jensen. Unfortunately, what should have been the greatest night of his teenage life ended before it had even begun following an extremely painful encounter between Ted, his trouser zip and a part of the male anatomy that really shouldn't be anywhere near one.

Thirteen years later Ted still hasn't forgotten Mary. Encouraged by his friend Dom, he finally decides to track down his old high-school crush and employs private investigator Pat Healy to discover where she is and what she's doing with her life.

Healy successfully locates Mary in Miami, but there's a slight problem. Having seen her for himself, he decides that he'd rather have Mary than the fee and reports back to Ted with a fabricated tale involving an overweight, mail-order-bride-loving mother of four. With Ted suitably discouraged, Healy sets about winning Mary for himself.

Using information gathered whilst secretly listening to her conversations, Healy creates a personality designed to match Mary's ideal man. Her interests become his interests, her opinions become his opinions and even her fondness for people with disabilities suddenly becomes something he can exploit. Surprisingly, his thoroughly dishonest plan begins to work.

However, Ted eventually discovers that Healy hasn't exactly been truthful and travels to Miami to see Mary himself. Unfortunately for both men, they're not the only ones pursuing her. Another admirer has constructed an equally elaborate fake personality in an attempt to win Mary's affections, whilst somebody much closer to Ted has an agenda of his own.

What follows is an increasingly ridiculous battle for Mary's attention involving lies, stalking, drugged dogs, fake disabilities, anonymous letters, bodily fluids and enough disastrous attempts at romance to make Ted's original prom night look relatively successful.

Picture & Sound

The picture quality is excellent, with a crisp and sharp image that comfortably demonstrates the improvement DVD offers over VHS. Colours are bright and vibrant throughout, particularly during the sunny Florida sequences, whilst flesh tones remain natural and there's a good level of detail visible in both close-ups and wider shots.

The source material is clean and there are no particularly distracting signs of artifacting or other compression problems. This isn't the sort of film that's going to provide a serious technical challenge for the format, but the transfer does everything required of it and is difficult to fault.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is equally clean, although there's understandably little here that requires particularly aggressive use of the surround channels. This is a dialogue and music-driven comedy rather than an action blockbuster, so anyone hoping to exercise their rear speakers and subwoofer is likely to be disappointed.

Dialogue is crystal clear throughout and the various songs used across the film are reproduced nicely across the front soundstage. The surrounds occasionally provide a little additional atmosphere, but for the most part they remain fairly quiet. Hardly demonstration material, then, but perfectly suited to the film.

Menu & Extras

The collection of extras is adequate rather than spectacular, with the Farrelly brothers' commentary easily the most worthwhile inclusion. Revisiting the film with the commentary enabled reveals plenty of interesting information about the production and demonstrates just how many friends and relatives the brothers managed to sneak into the cast and background. Talk about nepotism!

There's also the theatrical trailer, a music video, karaoke material and the rather naff Behind the Zipper featurette examining the film's now infamous opening accident. Interestingly, this particular featurette isn't present on the Region 1 edition, although American buyers receive a collection of outtakes instead.

Personally, I'd probably rather have had the outtakes. A film like this must have generated an enormous amount of unusable material and corpsing during production, and seeing the cast attempting to keep a straight face during some of the more ridiculous scenes would surely have been more entertaining than yet another featurette about Ted's unfortunate encounter with his zip.

Unfortunately, Fox have once again seen fit to vandalise the front cover by advertising the supplementary material directly on the artwork. Why? We're quite capable of turning the box over and reading about the extras for ourselves, thank you very much! After spending good money on a DVD, it would be nice if the cover didn't look like somebody had stuck an advertising poster over it.

Overall

There's Something About Mary certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea. If bodily fluids, toilet humour, politically incorrect jokes and watching Ben Stiller suffer increasingly painful humiliation aren't your idea of comedy, you'd probably be advised to stay well away.

However, if you like the Farrelly brothers and their warped sense of humour in films such as Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin, this will soon have you rolling around the floor. It's crude, tasteless, frequently ridiculous and, as far as I'm concerned, a comical masterpiece.

What makes it work is that underneath all the gross-out humour there's actually a surprisingly conventional romantic comedy. Ted isn't particularly sophisticated, successful or even remotely cool; he's simply been carrying a torch for the same woman since high school and would like another opportunity to see her. Unfortunately, virtually everybody surrounding Mary is considerably less straightforward.

Ben Stiller is perfectly cast as Ted, managing to remain strangely likeable despite spending much of the film being humiliated. The opening prom sequence alone would probably be enough to scar most men for life, yet things barely improve once he reaches adulthood.

And let's face it, there's not one man watching who doesn't wince during the now infamous zipper scene. You know exactly what's happened before you're shown anything, which somehow makes the anticipation even worse. Legs cross automatically. It's practically a reflex action.

Cameron Diaz is equally important because Mary needs to be sufficiently likeable for us to understand why practically every male character in the film becomes obsessed with her. Diaz manages that effortlessly and also proves more than capable of handling the Farrellys' increasingly outrageous comedy.

Matt Dillon is excellent as Healy, a wonderfully sleazy private investigator who sees absolutely nothing wrong with spying on Mary, listening to her private conversations and then constructing an entirely fictional personality based on what he's learned. Every time you think he can't become any more dishonest, he somehow manages it.

Lee Evans also makes an impressive American film debut as Tucker. His American accent is so convincing that a number of commentators apparently assumed he really was American and subsequently criticised his poor English accent. You really couldn't make it up.

Then there's W. Earl Brown as Mary's mentally disabled brother Warren. At the time the directors apparently carried out numerous test screenings to ensure that their portrayal of a retarded person wasn't considered offensive. Thankfully, the character survived intact and Brown's performance is exceptional. Warren is treated with genuine affection and respect whilst the Farrellys still manage to find comedy in the situations surrounding him rather than simply turning the character himself into the joke.

That's actually something the Farrelly brothers manage surprisingly well throughout the film. Their humour frequently sails extremely close to the wind and there's virtually nothing they won't attempt to make a joke about, yet underneath all the bad taste there's often considerably more warmth towards their characters than you'd initially expect.

Of course, the film is probably best remembered for a handful of scenes that immediately entered comedy folklore. The zipper incident is one. Mary's unusual choice of hair gel is another. Then there's the increasingly unfortunate dog, which demonstrates why mixing tranquillisers, household pets and Ben Stiller is probably best avoided.

The remarkable thing is that many of these sequences remain funny even when you know exactly what's coming. That's usually a good test of a comedy. Shock value might make you laugh once, but if the timing and performances aren't there the joke rapidly falls flat on repeat viewings.

There's Something About Mary doesn't suffer from that problem. The Farrellys cram so many jokes, background gags and ridiculous characters into the film that there's usually something you've forgotten between viewings, whilst the central performances remain funny even when the punchline is already obvious.

The DVD itself is a solid release. Picture quality is excellent, the soundtrack does everything a comedy soundtrack needs to do and the commentary provides enough additional information to make another viewing worthwhile. The extras could certainly have been stronger and I'd have happily swapped the zipper featurette for the Region 1 outtakes, but there's still enough here to satisfy fans.

Crude? Definitely. Tasteless? Frequently. Politically correct? Not remotely. Funny? Absolutely.

A comical masterpiece - just remember to cross your legs before Ted goes to the prom.

Special features

• Theatrical Trailer
• Music Video
• Karaoke
• Commentary from the Farrelly Brothers
• Behind the Zipper Featurette