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The Heartbreak Kid (DVD & HD-DVD)
A comedy that will break your heart for the wrong reasons
Tags: The Heartbreak Kid Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 28th, 2007
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Don’t think of me as a Farrelly brothers hater, but I found The Heartbreak Kid unfunny and slow. For the most part I like the writer/director brother duo, but here they seem to have lost their footing. Ben Stiller is Eddie, a commitment-wary man exiting his 30’s. We get about 20 minutes or so of exposition setting up his character and how he is alone. The scene where he attends his ex-girlfriend’s wedding lasts way too long than necessary because we know that the plot is going to shift. A scene afterwards where he walks along the street and sees a woman alone in a restaurant is completely unnecessary and only reinforces what we know and gets in the way of the story.
When we finally do get introduced to Eddie’s potential love interest, Lila (portrayed by Malin Akerman), we get a longer than necessary courtship and the inevitable turn of character. Eddie and Lila get married about 45 minutes or so into the film, and this is where the film starts to take off. All of the marketing that I saw behind The Heartbreak Kid centered on the fact that the seemingly normal woman that Eddie marries turns out to be completely insane, a fact that only comes out while the coupe are on their honeymoon.
After about 15 minutes of this, we shift focus again and have a completely different movie, where, on his honeymoon, Eddie finds what seems to be the perfect woman, Michelle Monaghan’s Miranda. The whole second half of the film deals with Eddie and coming to terms with the fact that he may have married the wrong person. I was already bored by the time the real plot of the film kicked into gear because of the pacing (much like this review). After taking too long to get to the relationship we know is going to happen, and then to shift gears after establishing it simply makes for a film that would have been better had some outside influence been exercised, either from a script standpoint or in the editing room.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The Heartbreak Kid is funny, and I did laugh out loud several times. The whole cast does a good job of filling their roles as believably as possible. Instead, my problem with the film comes completely with pacing. What should have been a quick 90 minute comedy turns into an overlong 2 hour multiple story event.
There are enough special features to make the disc attractive to fans. An audio commentary, behind the scenes featurettes, interviews, and more come in the package. What is interesting is that the case contains the notation “This film has been modified from its original theatrical version. It has been edited for content.” I couldn’t find anything in the special features that explain this, and it is irritating.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Ben Stiller is a funny guy and likeable here + When Malin Akerman portrays crazy she seems natural |
3.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Two different movies shoehorned together - "Edited for content"? - Slow pacing makes the film far longer than necessary |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| For Ben Stiller and Farrelly Brothers fans only. | |
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Tags: The Heartbreak Kid
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 28th, 2007 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
