‘Say It Isn’t So’

While some of the Farrelly brothers’ "anything goes" brand of humor works, this latest offering is patently unpleasant, often offensive and irredeemably disgusting.   [R]

By: Kam Williams

Chris Klein, left, falls in love with Heather Graham in Say It Isn’t So.

   Sometimes your kids can’t comprehend how harmful a film is, so it’s your job to understand for them. Such is the case with Say It Isn’t So, produced by the Farrelly Brothers, the reigning sultans of shock.
   Peter and Bobby Farrelly redefined the fabric of contemporary teen comedy with Dumb and Dumber, their blockbuster debut which earned nearly $350 million. The brothers have continued to bring P.T. Barnum’s sense of to taste to cinema with such box-office bonanzas as the equally outrageous There’s Something About Mary, Outside Providence and Me, Myself and Irene.
   While some of their "anything goes" brand of humor works, this latest offering is patently unpleasant, often offensive and irredeemably disgusting. I am far from a prude who expects every film to promote family values, but even I only have so much patience for a movie that seizes on any pretense to be shocking.
   Say It Isn’t So stars the talented Heather Graham, who has demonstrated her versatility in such hits as Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Bowfinger and Boogie Nights. She’s too bright for her lead role here as Jo, the dumb-blonde dingbat who inadvertently falls in love with her own brother. Chris Klein co-stars as Gilly, a shunned orphan in search of his long-lost birth mother.
   Expect two-time Oscar-winner Sally Field to go into hiding after her embarrassing, trailer-trash turn as Valdine, mother of Jo and Gilly. Orlando Jones, the insect-eyed 7-Up TV pitchman, appears as Dig McCaffey in that omniscient, black mystic role inexplicably included in so many movies as of late.
   The sick storyline puts a depraved spin on the classic romance. It’s love at first sight for animal control officer Gilly, when he sits in the barber’s chair of Jo, the new beaut of a beautician in town. Gilly remains smitten even after the klutzy cosmetologist cuts off his ear in a gratuitously captured moment. Nothing says love like hacking off an appendage.
   An amazing number of scandalous sequences are packed into 90 minutes. The first is a dinner table scene, already revealed by TV commercials, where a father accuses his teenage daughter of having her nose pierced without his permission only because she hates him. "No, I got THESE pierced because I hate you," the defiant girl retorts, yanking off her top for a lingering look at her breasts.
   Jo’s wheelchair-bound father, Walter, played by Richard Jenkins, is a repeated source of shamelessly, sadistic humor. He’s a surly stroke victim who is abused by almost everyone around him.
   No Farrelly Brothers film would be complete without its obligatory animal antics. Who could forget the dead dog beaten to the point of resuscitation in There’s Something About Mary, or the multiple gunshot cow in Me, Myself and Irene? Well, Say It Isn’t So goes overboard with Gilly, a degenerate Dr. Dolittle, engaged in something downright disgusting with a cat.
   I was also creeped out by how the movie celebrates pre-teen cigarette smoking, with an adult giving a carton of Marlboros to an 11-year-old. It also got on my nerves with its unfunny promotion of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of excessive amounts of Marijuana. This film is as bad as it gets, which translates to just another hit for the Fighting Farrellys.
Rated R for female frontal nudity, graphic bestiality, strong sexuality and profanity.