Rated R - Running Time: 1:33 - Released 3/23/01
SAY IT ISN'T SO
Rated R - Running Time: 1:33 - Released 3/23/01
There's nothing like time-wasting, career-padding, disposable
goofball comedies to make us critics wonder what we're doing with
our lives. Say It Isn't So, the incestual farce produced
(but not written or directed) by offensive comedy-meisters Peter
and Bobby Farrelly, fits the bill perfectly. The film is directed
by the Farrellys' frequent assistant director James B. Rogers
in his first try at the helm, and written by Peter Gaulke (Saturday
Night Live) and Gerry Swallow, and although this creative
team stays very close to its producers' formula of treading, and
in fact tromping, on socially thin ice, it only succeeds about
50% of the time. It does provide something to watch during winter's
long death rattle, however, and gives stars Chris Klein and Heather
Graham something to do between more important projects. But they
don't do anything very interesting.
Klein plays Gilly Noble, an animal control worker in Shelbyville,
Indiana, who grew up as an orphan. The film begins pathetically
with Gilly's oral dissertation on loneliness, but soon he is introduced
to an inept hairdresser named Jo Wingfield (Graham), who just
returned from Beaver, Oregon, where she broke off an engagement
with wealthy playboy Jack Mitchelson (Eddie Cibrian). Gilly and
Jo fall blissfully in love, much to the irritation of her trailer-trash
parents, the wheelchair bound Walter (Richard Jenkins), whose
recent stroke necessitates the use of a robotic sounding vocal
synthesizer to speak, and Valdine (Sally Field), a well-dressed
but ignorant woman who still wants Jo to marry Jack and score
the big payoff. But just as they begin to plan their wedding,
Gilly's hired investigator discovers that his mother is none other
than Valdine, who gave up a baby boy for adoption not long after
Jo was born. Naturally, their romantic relationship comes to a
screeching halt and Jo moves back to Beaver, where Jack is waiting
with open arms. But then the real Wingfield orphan shows up, and
Gilly decides to pursue his one true love.
The most interesting and amusing person in this movie is Orlando
Jones, whose character, double amputee and freelance pilot Dig
McCaffrey, is barely even necessary to the plot. Dig befriends
Gilly on his way to Beaver, and offers dubious help in various
situations, but it is Jones's characterization, not his role in
the story, that makes the difference. Resembling Jimi Hendrix
(complete with huge, head-banded afro), Jones enlightens every
scene he's in with comic energy, but that is a mixed blessing,
since it underscores the blandness of Klein and the usually unfunny
antics of Field and Jenkins. Graham, meanwhile, is not asked to
do anything but look good, which she does with utmost acuity.
This movie sinks or swims on its humor, and frankly, the Farrellys don't appear to have been very good swimming instructors. **½