If you were one of the skeptics expecting David Schwimmer to sink rather than swim in his directing debut, keep holding your breath, because the jury is still out. Schwimmer’s film, Run, Fat Boy, Run, was released in London last September, where it received stellar reviews and was king of the UK box office for four consecutive weeks. Americans, however, have been less generous to Fat Boy, which brought in a mere $2.3 million in its opening weekend, proving that the majority of American moviegoers continue to resist the type of dry humor that dominates the film. It’s a shame, because the movie is far wittier than traditional American slapstick comedies and makes for a hilarious and entertaining, if predictable, watch.
The film opens as Dennis (the talented Simon Pegg) sprints away from his own wedding and leaves his pregnant fiancé Libby (Thandie Newton) alone at the altar. Five years after he got cold feet, Dennis is still running, this time as a rent-a-cop in a women’s clothing store. Although the script makes little effort to fill in the details of the gap, Dennis is clearly miserable and wakes up everyday thinking about Libby.
When Dennis meets Libby’s boyfriend Whit, an alpha male with a corner office who runs marathons, he is driven into action by fear of losing Libby and their son Jake forever. The film centers on a basic David and Goliath plot that achieves its comic success through the rising action of Dennis’s training—think Rocky plus every sophomoric gross-out comedy of the past ten years—leading up to a marathon that features both men running for the love of Libby.
Fat Boy’s strengths and weaknesses alike stem from Michael Ian Black and Pegg’s screenplay. The well-developed jokes take aim at the absurd lengths men will go in order to win a woman, and the film can be viewed as a caricature of masculinity and the animalistic impulse that causes grown men to fight over a lover. The final marathon drags on a little too long, but Dennis and Whit’s childlike battle makes it tolerable.
The script’s main weakness is its familiarity. Pegg, who co-wrote Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, uses the same mold for setting up a conflict and employs his trademark wit to parody the protagonist’s generic journey to conquer his generic obstacle. The screenplay is well-written, but it is completely unoriginal, which helps explain why it has not received the same level of commercial success as Pegg’s earlier projects.
Unlike Dennis, the film moves at a brisk pace from the opening scene, allowing it to overcome the deficiencies in its script. Schwimmer infuses his shots with scenic clips of London that add an artistic element to a plot that makes no attempt at grace. Despite its lack of charm, Run, Fat Boy, Run will surely entertain, even if the jokes have been heard before.
