The summer 2005 movie season marked a throwback to the raunchy sex comedies of the 1980s. Before the days when every movie studio aimed for a PG-13 rating to maximize their market share, they made our comedies with everything we wanted-an R rating, vulgarity and, yes, tits. So in the spirit of Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, this summer brought us Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and The Aristocrats.
Wedding Crashers features the charming duo of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn doing, well, exactly what the title implies. Though the movie is consistently funny, it is the summer’s most overrated film. The first 15 minutes, lacking any semblance of plot, are the film’s best-a montage of the boys wreaking havoc at a series of nuptials and taking home quite a few beautiful bridesmaids (the bulk of the movie’s breasts are displayed here). Vince Vaughn carries most of the weight from then on, as Wilson gets bogged down in an uninteresting romance and his own suave smarminess. Christopher Walken shows up and is awkwardly hilarious as usual, along with Will Ferrell, whose cameo is surprisingly and disconcertingly unfunny. Still, the flick is amusing enough if one doesn’t expect too much.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin has just as many belly laughs as Wedding Crashers, but it has a love story that actually works. Steve Carrell is hysterical in his first starring role (he also co-wrote the film), and incredibly likeable as the quintessential nerd. He collects action figures, rides a bicycle (with a helmet) to work and watches Survivor with his elderly neighbors. Lewdness abounds, but it’s the romance with Katherine Keener-more fleshed out, realistic and endearing than anything in Wedding Crashers-that makes this the better of the summer’s raunchy romantic comedies.
Which brings us to The Aristocrats. This summer’s most obscene-and hilarious-movie was a documentary studying the history of the “classic” joke of the same name. These are some of the world’s best comedians joking on their own terms, and it’s amazing to see just how much fun they’re having. George Carlin, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Connolly and many, many more put their own spin on this perverse gag, which generally features some combination of a family, their dog, and a whole lot of feces, blood, semen, pedophilia, bestiality and other unmentionables. Not for the easily offended.
-Brendan Twist
Jim Jarmusch’s somewhat inaccessible Broken Flowers is a film for people who like characters and scenes more than stories. The plot centers on aging bachelor Don Johnston’s (Bill Murray) visits to his ex-girlfriends in an attempt to find his bastard son. A lonely financial success painted as a failure, Johnston is the morose, sarcastic type of character that Murray loves to play, but his act quickly becomes stale. His best-friend Winston (Jeffrey Wright), however, is infectious and entertaining in his enthusiasm. For those with patience and sympathy, Broken Flowers is beautiful; for the rest of us, we can tell that it’s beautiful on the inside.
-Michael J. Bruns
Murderball is not so much a movie about wheelchair rugby (an insane sport, halfway between football and NASCAR) as it is about all the living that can be done from a wheelchair. The wheelchair rugby players in this movie are really no different from any other Olympic athletes and are perfectly capable of living their lives to their fullest, which they prove by winning medals, beating each other up and having sex with women out of your league. One of the featured Murderball players sums up the feel of the movie when he admits, “I’ve actually done more in a wheelchair than out of one.”
-Stephen Fry
