I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

July 20th, 2007 by James Cook | Source:

Directed by: Dennis Dugan
Written by: Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Allen Covert, Dan Aykroyd

Score: 4/10

What ever happened to the great Adam Sandler comedy? It’s essentially dead, or if not dead then it’s currently being smothered. Actually the great Adam Sandler comedy has been getting smothered for quite sometime now. Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, The Longest Yard and Click have all taken their turn at trying to kill it. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry just put it on life support. Yes, the great Sandler comedy is almost extinct. Somebody please save it.

Larry (Kevin James) is a New York City firefighter and single dad raising a son and daughter. His wife has recently passed away and he is still having a hard time dealing with it. Chuck (Adam Sandler) is also a New York City firefighter and Larry’s best friend. Chuck is your typical bachelor and very popular with the ladies, he’s been made more popular now that he has become Mr. February for the NYC firefighter’s calendar.

Now that Larry’s wife has passed away, he needs to get his pension benefits transferred from his wife to his children. Sounds easy enough right? Well unfortunately for Larry it seems that he had to fix this problem within one year of his wife’s death. Apparently he received letters in the mail telling him of this situation but they were addressed to his wife, and he threw all her mail in the garbage because it was too painful to deal with. His solution to his problem is to remarry, so he ends up marrying Chuck because there are special benefits to same sex couples and because Chuck is the only one who he can trust. Chuck isn’t sold on the idea of pretending to be gay and Larry just happens to be asking Chuck to marry him when he has about ten hooters girls in his bedroom. He eventually goes along with the plan in the hopes of just having to be his husband on paper.

Why was a letter involving a problem with Larry’s pension being sent to his dead wife? Also Larry is presented with a solution to his problem early on in the movie, and it’s called paper work. When he goes to see somebody at the insurance company they tell him that there is some paper work that can fix all of his problems, but it may take a while to process. Larry insists that because he is a firefighter he needs to have a solution right away because he could die at anytime. Okay, that’s all understandable, but then why does he decide to marry Chuck who also happens to be a firefighter? These are just some of the many plot holes that plagued this movie.

The government soon becomes suspicious of the two and sends in one of there lackeys (Steve Buscemi) to spy on them. Chuck and Larry enlist the help of an attorney (Jessica Biel), but she’s only there to provide the eye candy.

There are some funny moments in the movie; one scene in particular where Chuck and Larry are saving a fat man from a burning building did have me laughing, but the majority of the genuine laughs don’t come from the two leads they come from Ving Rhames who plays a fireman that still hasn’t come out of the closet. It was also awesome to see Dan Aykroyd back in comedy, even if he didn’t get to truly shine; also he gets to slide down a fire pole again which is sweet - even if he wasn’t wearing his Ghostbusters uniform.

Overall, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry tanks right from the beginning. Larry can fix his problem he just chooses not to, and leap frogs to the most ridiculous solution. Now I can usually look past a lot of plot holes in films and just roll with the punch, but Chuck and Larry has one of the worst. To set the premise as a guy who needs to marry another guy to save his life insurance policy is one thing, but to actually offer up a legitimate solution to his problem in the first ten minutes and have him completely ignore it is something else. Add the usual cast of characters from other Sandler films, plus all the gay stereotype jokes you can handle, throw in a weird side story of Larry having a gay son and you have one of the worst movies of the year.