By PETER CALDER
Herald rating: * * *
The newest film by the Farrelly brothers, America's rollicking masters of bad taste, has the considerable distinction of being a one-joke comedy full of funny gags. It's also better than the brothers' previous efforts such as Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary
because of its enormous generosity of spirit and the terrifically genial performances of Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear in the main roles.
They play conjoined twins, respectively Bob and Walt Tenor, whose determination not to be patronised is almost as strong as their revulsion for the term "Siamese" ("We're American," Bob insists). They flip burgers at a cafe where their schtick involves a high-speed double act that offers patrons free food if the cooks don't beat the clock.
Walt, a budding actor, has bigger dreams. He does a pretty good one-man show in which he plays Truman Capote (there's an excellent running gag that bounces his thespian aspirations off Bob's sweating stage-fright) and he drags his brother off to Hollywood where Bob has an internet sweetheart.
The film is cheerfully dismissive of the basics of genetics (that conjoined twins are always identical, for example, and tend to be of similar ages) and the extent and nature of their fusion rather varies depending on the demands of each scene.
But in often snappy flashbacks it celebrates the success of the brothers' lifelong teamwork, mainly on the sports field — as a double-size ice-hockey goalie, a baseball pitcher who can simultaneously stare down a batter and run out a baseman, and a four-fisted boxer. Perhaps predictably, it all lapses into treacly sentiment at the end but for all that it flirts with crassness, it has a kind and gentle heart.
It becomes — perhaps auto-biographically, given that it's the work of two brother film-makers conceptually joined at the hip — a funny and touching love story about two people who can't live without each other. The DVD extra features include commentary by directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel.
DVD, video rental
