Rob Schneider has been an amusing comic from his days as cast regular on TV’s Saturday Night Live. His only real success was a modest one, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and now he returns to that character several years later. The results are disastrous. In the tradition of terrible comedies such as John Goldfarb Please Come Home and Which Way to the Front, this R-rated entree is trouble from start to finish.
Deuce Bigalow takes up where he left off as a jinxed widow who travels to Europe to join his pimp friend, T. J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin), who gets in hot water as a mistaken prime suspect in a series of murders of gigolos or ‘man whores’ as they call themselves. Deuce explores the European world of these men and even interviews the last women to see the murder victims alive. This sets up an amusing series of dates with women who have unusual physical attributes. At the same time the police are investigating the crimes, Deuce runs into and falls in love with a beautiful woman, Eva (Hanna Verboom), who is afflicted with a multitude of behavioral ticks due to obsessive compulsive disorder. She is also the niece of the lead detective on the case who has a grudge against these ‘man whores’. The story leads to the Man Whore Awards as Deuce races to save the day while the murderer has planned a final deadly act.
That sums up a simple, silly plot that is flawed in script and execution. The director (who is heck is Mike Bigelow, a pseudonym?) and a committee of writers don’t give the story or the lead actors a chance to succeed. What’s worse is that the skills of most of the people involved appear amateurish at best and may have been reedited and cut severely during post-production. Indeed, the transitions are at times jarring and sloppy. Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, and Ernest Lubitsch are rolling in their graves.
If only the screenwriters had trusted their story more and sprinkled the jokes sparingly, the film would take on a more structured and involving comedic romance. Instead, what we get is literally toilet humor of the worst kind and repeated gags that are gross and intellectually void of brain matter. It’s one thing to have bawdy sight gags and vulgar humor which can actually spice up a comedic romp like Animal House or American Pie, but the jokes here are terrible to begin with and inserted at awkward times as if the filmmakers didn’t trust the material and threw in the kitchen sink, albeit a dirty one. It’s saying something when the Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary) have more class in any given scene of their comedies than all these jokes put together. A missed opportunity is Schneider’s character falling in love with Eva. It is perhaps the only half-way decent thing the movie has going, and it is never fully developed. It does try to be good hearted and at times there is a glimmer of a decent scene only to be undermined by a sick punchline.
Schneider tries too hard at being funny and seems like he is forcing the jokes which makes it even worse. Griffin fares scarcely better in a cardboard role unworthy of his standup talent. Only Verboom fares adequately as Eva, and she is perhaps the only nice thing about the film. Not even the cameo/bit roles by Saturday Night Live alumni Norm MacDonald, Fred Armisen, and even Adam Sandler can bring life to the proceedings.
It is best to avoid Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo at all costs, and unless you have nothing better to do with your free time, it is still best to sit in a corner and stare at a blank wall; you will be far more entertained. Run for your lives!
* of **** stars mostly for Hanna Verboom
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