Building on the success of the pretty funny “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison productions have teamed up to produce this sequel that is no funnier than the original but raises the bar on on-screen bad taste to near-record heights. Skillfully walking the tightrope between the simple “R” rating and the “kiss of death” NC-17,” the writers and directors of “European Gigolo” somehow managed to land in the safe zone with a compendium of drug and bodily fluid material previously unseen outside of porn parlors and military training films.
John Water’s “A Dirty Shame” and Terry Zwigoff / Billy Bob Thornton’s “Bad Santa” come to mind. “Dirty Shame” garnered the coveted NC-17 in a walk because of the freakish concentration on genitalia coupled with fetish humor. Based on that example, the only reason “European Gigolo” avoided it was because it concentrated on the general physical freakishness of its characters rather than the genital freakishness. The toilet humor in “Gigolo” is triple that of “Shame,” but apparently the minimized genitalia exposure saved the day. In fact, one is about as gross as the other depending on personal tastes. But it’s hard to compare, say, eating soaking wet french fries out of a toilet to fecal facials.
“Bad Santa” also got off with the “R” rating, more specifically, “R for pervasive language, strong sexual content and some violence.” “Gigolo’s” R is for “for pervasive, strong, crude and sexual humor, language, nudity and drug content,” which just about sums it up. So, if you saw, or talked to people who saw, either of the above-mentioned movies and thought they concentrated too much on bodily functions and bizarre physical and mental handicaps, give this film a miss. You won’t last the first twenty minutes.
But it’s time to move on lest we dote on the gross-out attributes of the film without commenting on the humor content. Unfortunately, there is little. Schneider, Griffin and Bigelow give it their best shot but the laughs come more from the closet anarchists in the audience giving the finger to the establishment than from actual funny lines. The gross-out becomes the message and the humor is there only to mark time in between new ways to outrage whatever puritanical attendees may have dropped in by mistake on the way to prayer meeting.
Optimistic viewers might reason that there is some good in all of this. They might propose that our society is uptight about sex, toilets, drugs, fecal matter and permanent holes in people’s chests through which they squirt liquids with amazing accuracy and unexplained volume. But the majority, even after watching this film, will probably continue to maintain that there are reasons why we loathe things that smell bad and there are reasons we instinctually resist putting compounds into orifices ill suited to such use. We don’t need to “lighten up” and enjoy such things any more than we need to learn to enjoy beating our heads against a wall. To allow our bodies and our household plumbing fixtures to follow their natural courses and obvious uses is not a sign of mental torment from which we need to be released by the gentle humor of Mr. Sandler and Happy Madison productions. Most of us are getting along fine as is.
Access media from Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo .
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