Stuck On You

It’s as the Farrelly brothers state in one of the extras; make the audience care about your characters and you can get away with anything.

Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear play the Tenor brothers who are joined at the liver and are very different people. Damon is Bob, a short order cook and Kinnear plays Walt, an aspiring thespian. After another knockout one-man performance in the local theatre (yes, one man), Walt decides he wants to take on Hollywood and, although Bob is skeptical, they head off for Los Angeles.

"Hey, you guys are stuck together!"

They meet with all sorts of troubles regarding their conjoinededness, but when they accidentally meet Cher (played by Oscar®-winner Cher), she gets them cast in a show she’s trying to get out of making. Unfortunately, she didn’t count on them being great at it and soon they’ve been taken under America’s wing and the show is a huge hit (it’s called Honey and the Beaze which is pretty funny). Meanwhile, Bob’s Internet girlfriend doesn’t know about his conjoinededness and, afraid she won’t like him, he tries to conceal it with disastrous consequences. What’s worse, Bob hates California and wants to go home so they decide, finally, to get separated regardless of the costs.

Somehow the Farrelly brothers can take what is pretty much a taboo subject and make it funny without being either discriminatory or offensive. Nor does it get treated with pity or sentimentality and, in fact, their method manages to even educate in some loose way. While nowhere near politically correct, their brand of dismembered humour reminds us that whoever we are, something about us is funny to everyone else and using that they manage to capture a niche market that is practically untapped. Well, since they came along there have been others who have tried, but no one can equal their manner of capturing the taboo laughs while still keeping some heart in it.

The Farrelly boys have yet again brought us a film with many minor inclusions hidden about for the alert amongst us. The producer and ex-studio manager for Paramount, Robert Evans, gets several mentions here that could have easily been references to the Farrelly’s own hard-headedness regarding their work. Their personal band of friends and well-wishers make appearances as they do in plenty of other Farrelly films, which gives an overall feeling of honesty to the film content. We know it’s a movie, but behind that we can see a warmth that is wholly endearing regardless of how puerile or vulgar the humour may get. So we laugh in spite of ourselves, and that’s a fast-decreasing commodity in film today with political correctness becoming more and more important for studios not wishing to exclude or offend anyone. And that’s funny in itself; I’m not sure how many of the conjoined community would feel about this film, but it hasn’t been made in an offensive manner; it’s the situation that’s funny. No one’s laughing at the individuals.

Even if they are both pretty funny guys in their own right.

A faultless presentation that I won’t bore you by describing. It’s perfect and even the old troublemaker of shadow detail is clear. We also get the full cinema aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with 16:9 enhancement, even if we don’t really need the big picture. There are no big landscape shots or anything, after all. Perfect, ten yellow spots.

A choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 surround or DTS 5.1 surround means we win regardless of our choice. Everything’s super with both enjoying plenty of surround action, even if it isn’t entirely necessary in this talkie/visual humourfest. There’s a cool soundtrack housing a host of the usual sort of semi-relevant songs with the best, I think, going to the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses. How apt. Another ten spots here.

A veritable feast for anyone into all things Farrelly, as is usually the case on their bigger films. The audio commentary is the usual Farrelly affair with plenty of funny backstories and descriptive methods for how scenes came together and who wrote what gags (most of the Farrelly stuff starts out as a guideline and the cast and crew can throw in any ideas they think might work to get the best overall gag). There’s also a handy guide in this to pointing out the Farrellys’ friends and cameos within, plus info on gags that didn’t work and why. It’s a packed commentary and very entertaining, even if the Farrelly’s recorded it after an all-nighter on another set.

Eight deleted and extended scenes are next and there are some lengthy ones here played with film context. These are all in 2.35:1 sans enhancement.

It’s Funny: The Farrelly Formula runs for 16:01 and is one of those featurettes you don’t feel obligated to watch just because you bought the DVD. This is a compilation of character interviews from the string of film hits all about the Farrellys. Renée Zellwegger, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Jason Alexander are among the many interviewees here (shot during original shoots) contributing to a warm and funny featurette.

There’s another one next in Stuck Together: Bringing Stuck On You to the Screen. This is a more mainstream featurette about the film and the casting process and making of that runs 12:50.

The final featurette is incredibly interesting and is entitled Making it Stick: The Makeup Effects of Stuck On You. This runs a perfect length at 9:23 and details the painstaking makeup of joining two grown men together convincingly. You have no idea just how hard it was until you’ve seen this. Apparently the most difficult of all the Farrelly’s many makeup moments and well worth the visit.

Finally a fairly flaccid blooper reel rounds things out for 7:08. I would have expected some funnier moments than these took place, but I guess we don’t get to see ‘em.

This isn’t a huge collection of stuff, but most of it is very interesting and covers territory we’ve not seen before, even if we’ve already visited them. A nice selection, though outtakes would have been better than the blooper reel.

The Farrelly brothers are not going to go away, that much is apparent by now. So if you don’t like what they do, best to steer clear of this release. However, if you’re in the majority and do like their unique brand of humour, this is one of their better efforts. While still not quite taking the crown from There’s Something About Mary, this one’s most definitely up there among their best. The perfect transfer just further adds to the value of this very funny, very warm release. Get stuck into it (haha).