Waiting…

Monty (Ryan Reynolds) and Dean (Justin Long) from Waiting. Photo credit: Steven Teagle

 
Is there a lesson to be learned from “Deuce Bigalow,” from which first time director Rob McKittrick could benefit? If there is, perhaps it’s the fact that witless, gross-out comedy doesn’t work.

Monty (Ryan Reynolds) shows up at a party, to meet up with his co-workers Serena (Anna Faris) and Raddimus (Luis Guzman). Their other co-worker, Dean (Justin Long), wakes up next to some girl. They all work at Shenaniganz—a parody of the typical sports bar and grill theme.

Within the first ten minutes of the film, Monty sets the tone of things to come, “Hey there, Natasha. How’s my favorite minor doing?”

This is one of many examples of punchlines without set-ups… or set-ups without punchlines. That line is about as funny as the entire movie gets. Immediately thereafter, the movie begins its long descent into a series of penis jokes interrupted by occasional dialogues about working at Shenaniganz.

Monty informs the new Trainee, Mitch (John Francis Daley), that they have a game they play. This game, naturally, involves flashing one’s penis while an unsuspecting “victim” makes their way into the kitchen.

Says Serena, “If you guys go five minutes without referencing your genitalia, I’ll be amazed.”

So would I.

The relationships between the primary characters aren’t fleshed out very well. There’s one scene that establishes Dean’s relationship with his mother. His mother reminds me of those cardboard stand-ups of actors. We know absolutely nothing about her. McKittrick needed to flesh her role out a bit more so we’d care about Dean’s relationship with his mother enough to have some genuine sense of conflict between what Dean’s friends expect of him and what he, by way of his parental influence, expects of himself. Conflict is as essential in establishing dramatic tension as it is comedic irony.

There’s actually not much happening in the story itself. There’s really no central narrative to drive the story (as in “Office Space” which revolves around, more or less, a money laundering scheme gone hilariously bad). Instead, there are numerous subplots, none of which are really seen through to fruitiion—save perhaps one.

One such subplot that goes nowhere in particular is Monty’s bizarre relationship with his mother and her equally-tiresome one-liners. In one dinner conversation, Monty makes up a story about dating a hooker. You can imagine my disappointment with this scene when Malick’s talent for snarky comebacks (as exhibited in the TV series, Just Shoot Me) is reduced to a bland joke involving correcting Monty’s grammar—”The hooker and I.”

The scene almost implies some sort of Freudian sexual tension between the sexually-immature Monty and his considerably more perverted mother. However, if we accept low-brow as this film’s aim, it fails to even explore the Alexander-Olympias theme brewing here. McKittrick tries with this scene, but it ends up reading like a “Metaphor for Dummies” chapter explaining how to imply, in too pedestrian a manner, sexual frustration and immaturity. It would be comedic if there were a backstory to it, but none is really established.

The film is too busy toying with homophobia that later dialogues rationalize as the insecurities of the characters, but in the moment of the individual jokes it seems as though McKittrick and his friends were sitting around trying desperately to come up with things they thought were funny—homophobic jokes being the first thing that came to their mind. This is unfortunate for McKittrick, a first time director. I recently had an opportunity to converse with him and I do like the guy… I just think he has a lot to learn about being funny.

The only subplot that goes anywhere involves Dean’s aspirations. Chett (Travis Resor) is like a role model to him. Dean’s mother, in that monochromatic conversation I mentioned earlier, praises Chett’s material pursuits. He has a degree, and a well-paying job. Dean feels he’s going nowhere. As a server, he’s incredibly diligent, but is trying hard to convince himself this is all he’s destined for. When given the opportunity to become assistant manager, Dean is caught between his mother’s expectations and his resignation to mediocrity out of fear that he might fail if he tries for something bigger.

The foul-mouthed and compact Naomi (Alanna Ubach) overhears the manager Dan (David Koechner, resembling a heavier, balding Tom Hanks) offering the position to Dean. Word eventually gets around, and this comes back to Dean. Now, in addition to his internal conflict and the external one posed by his coworkers whose respect he may lose if he takes a position of authority.

Perhaps I’m glorifying the way in which this unfolds, because I think less screen time is devoted Dean’s character development than the amount of time it’ll take you to read this review.

The third major subplot, which essentially is the same joke replayed several times, involves the desecration of people’s food when they’re being jerks to the servers. While I thought this movie could be more like Kevin Smith’s first feature, “Clerks,” and offer some insight into the universe of teenage disenfranchisement, the film has been building up only to two gross-out jokes: One involves what the wait staff does to a woman’s food after she treats her server, Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), like lint; the other is basically Naomi’s payback to the guys for all their phallic games.

Instead of delivering a punchline, the film finally ends on a “ho-hum” note… POSSIBLE SPOILER: Mitch, who has been interrupted at every opportunity until now, finally gets a word in edgewise. Unfortunately, instead of Mitch walking away with the last laugh, the crew reels Mitch back into their absurd universe. The narrative doesn’t really establish Mitch enough make us care about his breaking point—much less find it ironic and unpredictable—and so it doesn’t manage to resolve the film with an explosively-funny punchline. Instead, it fizzles like the stale beer served at a bad restaurant.

Waiting… • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • MPAA Rating: R for strong crude and sexual humor, pervasive language and some drug use. • Distributed by Lions Gate Films