Posted on 08/12/2005 8:10:01 AM PDT by Borges
"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. "Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.
Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a "man whore"). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the movie's closest thing to a sex scene is when he wears diapers on orders from a giantess. Oh, and he goes to dinner with a woman with a laryngectomy, who sprays wine on him through her neck vent.
The plot: Deuce visits his friend T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam, where T.J. is a pimp specializing in man-whores. Business is bad, because a serial killer is murdering male prostitutes, and so Deuce acts as a decoy to entrap the killer. In his investigation he encounters a woman with a penis for a nose. You don't want to know what happens when she sneezes.
Does this sound like a movie you want to see? It sounds to me like a movie that Columbia Pictures and the film's producers (Glenn S. Gainor, Jack Giarraputo, Tom McNulty, Nathan Talbert Reimann, Adam Sandler and John Schneider) should be discussing in long, sad conversations with their inner child.
The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."
Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."
Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.
But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
I wouldn't have placed Schneider as high as third-rate. Fifth-rate or sixth-rate maybe.
Just like Homer Simpson, I have a cheat sheet in my wallet. One of the things it says is: "Anything Ebert says, assume the opposite to be true".
It sounds like this may be the one time he is right.
I had forgotten about "Demolition Man" and yes, I did happen to like that movie. Did he have any lines in it? I can not remember any, so I guess it did not exceed my Schneider quotient.
That's gonna leave a mark.
I have a pet theory that conservative actors are generally bad at their job because they lack the childlike sense of disengagement with reality that makes liberal actors - think Sean Penn - so good.
It's no suprise that Schneider is a Republican.
[That said, I do have a guilty love, or at least indulgent tolerance of, nearly all his, and Adam Sandler's, flicks...yeah, I know]
I went to see "Wedding Crashers" last weekend (funniest movie that I've seen in years) and the previews forced us to watch the DB:EG trailer.
I was immediately angry at the way Hollywierd insults us. They think I'm stupid enough to fork out $9 for another Deuce Bigalow movie and they're not afraid to say it. BTW, I caught the first one on cable, so I saved another $9 by missing that one.
Schiender did do a great job doing the weather on Fox & Friends yesterday.
If Ebert's against it, I might have to be for it.
Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement
Film critics sit around all day in a circle jerk of giving each other awards.
You know, I’m positive Rob Schneider’s new movie is downright awful, but for a guy who wrote the following movie, Ebert shouldn’t be talking too much smack:
The review is probably correct...but Ebert is still a jerk.
Y'all have got to read this review.
Indeed. The playwright of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, also directed by the inimitable Russ Meyer, has precious little business criticizing Rob Schnieder.
Russ Meyer actually served in WW2 under Patton!
When, oh when, will these comic geniuses be paired together in a movie.
Generally, that's a pretty safe rule: If Ebert likes it, I won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
Once in a while, though, he actually gets it right. I suspect this might be one of those times.
What did Ebert say about "Dukes of Hazzard," I wonder?
I believe the term for that is "Armageddon." Or "The End of the World." Something like that.
He hated it. If you take that rule seriously you dislike a lot of great classics that Ebert writes about.
A movie that would suck so badly as to resemble a Black Hole.
Glenn Beck was reading from a similarly awful review of this film from the New York Times this morning. I still can't believe they made a sequel.
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