Stuck On You (6/10)

Copyright © 2003 by Tony Medley

Bo (Matt Damon) and Walt (Greg Kinnear) run a coffee shop and they are the cooks. They’re also Siamese twins, having been joined at the hip for all of their 32 years. They get along well, but Walt is a frustrated actor and decides he wants to go to Hollywood to try to make it. Bo, who has sublimated himself all their lives to Walt’s outgoing personality, goes along.

I’m not a big fan of the Farrelly Brothers. I was one of the few who didn’t find There’s Something About Mary (1998), the Farrellys' scatological hit, uproariously funny. So I wasn’t expecting much. I must admit that Stuck On You pleasantly surprised me, even though it was much too long, at two hours. I got tired of watching these guys walk as one.

After they move to Hollywood, however, I was frightened out of my skin and thought maybe I had entered the wrong screening room when one of the most horrific monsters I’ve ever seen came on the screen. After a moment’s reflection, however, I recognized that it was no monster at all. It was Cher!. This woman has gone through so much surgery that to me she looks scarier than the monster in Alien. OK, I jest. But she has turned herself into a joke. After I got used to her looks, I settled down a little, but her face and lips are as memorably bizarre as Michael Jackson’s.

This is not wonderfully funny. But it is poignant. It’s a good story of two guys who don’t want to be viewed as freaks and who have accepted their lot in life.

As far as I was concerned, Greg Kinnear was the best thing in As Good As It Gets (1997), even though he was the only main actor in the movie not nominated for an Academy Award. After that film, Kinnear has made some questionable career choices, appearing in one humdrum movie after another. Finally he’s got another part almost as good as the one in As Good As It Gets, and he makes the most of it. 

You’ve got to hand it to Matt Damon.  Clearly, he’s no Jack Nicholson. For a mediocre talent like him to attach himself to someone like Greg Kinnear, and to appear in almost every scene with him, takes Chutzpah. Without Kinnear, Stuck On You would be a loser. With him, it's engaging.

December 11, 2003

The End