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Bookmark this pageI Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)
Director: Dennis Dugan
Synopsis
Firemen Chuck and Larry are best friends willing to do anything for each other, so much so that when civic red tape prevents Larry from naming his own two kids as his life insurance beneficiaries, Chuck agrees to bend the rules and pretend to be his domestic partner on some city forms. But when a local bureaucrat becomes suspicious, the new couple’s arrangement turn into a citywide issue. Forced to improvise as love-struck newlyweds, Chuck and Larry must pretend to be living a life of domestic bliss under the same roof.
Movie review
From Time Out London
New York firefighter Chuck (Adam Sandler) agrees to enter into a civil partnership with his widowed crewmate Larry (Kevin James) so the latter can ensure his benefits are passed on to his children. It’s a set-up as muddled as the sexual politics of this mortifying would-be comedy, in which homosexuality is equated with femininity, femininity with breasts and virtue with a mean right hook. There are also lame fat gags and a comedy Japanese man of the sort that you thought had gone out with ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’.
Facing a ‘Green Card’-style state investigation of their relationship (cue smokin’ hot lawyer Jessica Biel), Chuck and Larry become a cause célèbre in the supposed name of gay rights, fighting to win over their colleagues and the system. There are one or two neat ribbings of homophobia, including a shower-room soap-dropping scene filmed like ‘Jaws’, but given the mincing, minstrelised characterisations, you’d be excused for thinking no one involved in this had ever actually met a real, live homo.
The film is actually a paean to male friendship with a severe case of gay panic: its leads can declare their love for one another but the thought of a kiss inspires revulsion. (There’s less man-on-man action here than in ‘Philadelphia’.) That said, the lengths to which the picture goes to establish Chuck’s world-beating red-bloodedness – if he’s not fielding hundredweights of porn, he’s fighting off nympho twins – smacks of nothing so much as the closet.
Author: Ben Walters
Time Out London Issue 1935: September 19-25
User reviews of this film
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- rebbeka said...
- Posted on Sep 25 2007 18:01 this film was so funny. i nearly wet myself
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- kylie said...
- Posted on Sep 25 2007 11:51 i cant wait to see this film, sounds hilarious!!!
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- rebecca said...
- Posted on Sep 24 2007 17:10 i think that this film was quite good- it was funny in how life like it was and how they struggle to keep there needs for women under control!!!! lol
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- John Moore said...
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Posted on Sep 24 2007 12:13
Ed:
Having had an education up to degree level, I'm certainly qualified to write.
Tomm: Love you too. - Report as inappropriate
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- Rhorie ` said...
- Posted on Sep 23 2007 21:30 Gan Tii See That Like ;)
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- dave said...
- Posted on Sep 22 2007 22:07 This was crap
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- mw said...
- Posted on Sep 22 2007 16:59 Quality! A must see
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- danny maher said...
- Posted on Sep 22 2007 15:01 brilliant film, anything with adam sandler and kevin james in has to be brilliant, must see!!
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- John Moore said...
- Posted on Sep 21 2007 14:17 Such childish homophobic clap-trap deserves to bomb in the cinema. Stereotypes like this do nothing for gay rights!
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- Jash Simson said...
- Posted on Jul 23 2007 08:36 i like Adam Sandler's all movies. I will also watch this movie.
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Cast & crew
Director: Dennis Dugan
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Ving Rhames, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Buscemi, Nicholas Turturro, Richard Chamberlain full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Rated: 12A
Duration: 110 mins
UK Release: Sep 21 2007
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