I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry ended up in my queue because when Adam Sandler first started out, I thought his comedy was dumb until I didn’t then I watched and loved all his movies. I realized that I was a complete snob who needed to have fun. Then around Big Daddy, I came full circle and thought that he was crap again. Success alienated Sandler from his own brand of humor. His movies were funny ha ha, not actually uncontrollable laugh out loud funny, he was retreading or heavily supplementing his movies by pulling a Madonna—recruiting others who had tapped into the zeitgeist in that particular era to hold up his sagging humor. He tried to make movies that reflected his current experience as a person financially able to go on trips or afford a certain type of lifestyle, but his ability to reliably tap into a popular common vein of national humor had completely passed, and his movies went from must see to multitasking films.
If you gave Sandler’s current comedies your full attention, you would hate them, but as background noise, and if you didn’t spend any money or effort to see them, they are passable. As his comedies have turned into dreck, his dramatic work is skyrocketing so don’t feel too bad for him. He is a successful shadow of his younger self still making serious bank through Netflix because people aren’t going out and paying to see his movies, but will happily watch them under the illusion that they are free because they don’t have to open the wallet to do so. Because I was wrong before, I’d love to believe that I am wrong again and discover that lightning strikes twice.
If it has, it isn’t with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. This movie stars Kevin James as a firefighter widow with two kids who wants to change his life insurance policy beneficiary, but can’t without getting married so he gets his best friend and coworker played by Adam Sandler to marry him, but the State of New York believes they are committing fraud and investigate him. They must convincingly pretend that they are a couple or go to jail. I watched the entire movie on my iPhone while working on something else, which made it mildly amusing and helped to pass the time, but even with that low level of attention, it was a bit problematic.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry fails to fully blend the movie as a James Sandler vehicle. The first half is devoted to James’ character’s problem, and the second half becomes a rom com in which Sandler’s character finally is serious about someone, their attorney, played by Jessica Biel, but can’t express his feelings without destroying the relationship and going to jail. Yet again, one of Sandler’s movies ends in a trial. I beg all movies to please stop using courtrooms as denouements. An administrative hearing would not be that showy anyway. Ugh!
While I have no doubt that I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry intends to champion equality regardless of sexual orientation, it does so by also having a bunch of straight men play gay men and straight men pretending to be gay, which means a whole lot of gay stereotypes that range from harmless to not that different from how straight men treat and see gay men when they are actually ridiculing them. Does the difference in intent excuse the behavior? I’m not a gay man so I’m not going to pretend as if I know how gay men feel, but it does bother me. Richard Chamberlain and Lance Bass seem to disagree.
It isn’t enough that we know that the leads are straight men who are basically the real life superheroes of our time, firefighters, especially for New Yorkers, but they lay it on a little thick when it comes to Sandler’s character. We’re supposed to believe that he is an irresistible ladies man who beds scores of women consensually in the same night and is the centerfold of a firefighter calendar. (Um, don’t tell him, but how does he know that the men who appear in those calendars aren’t gay?) We get it! You’re a hot (really?), hyper heterosexual man. You’re the last man who should be considered gay. Why is it so important to not be gay or even plausibly mistaken as gay if being gay is fine? Side note: why do guys think scoring twins is hot? It is incest. Ew.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry does something that I noticed a lot of heterosexuals do. It poses the question of which person in the couple is the man and the woman and riffs on the joke that clearly Sandler is the woman in the relationship. It never occurred to me for a long time that this misconception was even offensive until I started learning about transgender issues, which made me double back and ask about how gender roles and norms are distinct from sexual orientation. Gay men are men regardless of whether or not they adhere to gender norms or not. There is no woman in the relationship, which is the whole point of a same sex relationship. The same applies for lesbians, which I don’t recall any in the movie, which may be a relief because a lesbian would probably be depicted with a whole new set of problems.
Like all movies that are performative allies, when the characters experience bias, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry falls all over itself to explain that their former friends are not bad guys. I hate this kneejerk requirement to reassure the majority that they are not evil. It is really easy not to be a bad guy. Don’t do bad things, or if you do, and someone corrects you, apologize and change your behavior. Now you’re not a bad guy. People are more concerned with bad guys’ feelings than bad guys’ behavior. I was brought up fundamentalist. I’m fairly certain that I was or occasionally am a bad guy, but I don’t want to be. Don’t give me empty reassurances that I’m not evil. Then I won’t change.
If you are reading this review while rolling your eyes and thinking, “You are over thinking it. It is just a comedy. You can’t expect them to understand all these concepts. It is just supposed to be funny.” Wrong because some of the funniest movies that I have seen were because they nailed all these concepts: Appropriate Behavior, The Incredible Jessica James. They are funnier because they reflect the world, and there is not a moment when the movie gets spoiled by subconscious fact checking. It is like seeing an awesome meme with a misspelled word, but worse.
We’ve come a long way from Three’s Company, which I used to love. I think that our comedy movies and TV shows should reflect that. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry’s heart may be in the right place, but the bar should not be so low as being ok with someone’s existence. You still need to see the other person as a human being.