Stuck on You

Oh brother! Those goofy Farrelly boys have made a comedy about conjoined twins. Joined at the hip, Walt (Kinnear) and Bob (Damon) are cooks at Quickee Burger in Martha's Vineyard - but Walt, a local am-dram star, has a yen to try his luck in Hollywood. Shy, nervous Bob reluctantly agrees to come along for the ride. In such films as There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hal the Farrellys have boldly plumbed taboos (bodily fluids, IQ scores, lard) to sometimes liberating comic effect, but underneath the gross-out gags you'll always find a heart of purest mush. Lately, that heart's been getting out of hand. This film may be the upbeat, humanist conjoined-twin movie we've all been waiting for, but it could sure use more laughs. To be fair, the film has its moments, but these remain isolated, any comic momentum immediately squandered by the Farrellys' standard cackhanded direction, their politically corrected designs on our sympathy, and by a script pulling in at least two directions at once. Kudos to Cher, totally convincing as a shameless egomaniac going by the name of 'Cher'. It's also moderately amusing (if utterly irrelevant) to see Meryl Streep whooping it up in a climactic musical production of Bonnie and Clyde.