Once in a great while a movie's credits go a long way toward explaining why the picture is better than it has any right to be. Such is the case with "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."
L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO | Posted: Thursday, July 19, 2007 7:00 pm
Once in a great while a movie’s credits go a long way toward explaining why the picture is better than it has any right to be. Such is the case with “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” the latest Adam Sandler vehicle in which he and Kevin James pretend to be a gay couple.
On the surface, that seems like a very bad idea. Sandler isn’t exactly known for his taste. Even though he’s grown up a bit and demonstrated he can actually act, he still produces the horrible Rob Schneider movies, and the “Chuck and Larry” setup looked like it could be just as offensive as the Schneider pictures.
But the screenplay credit tells a different story. Barry Fanaro, who wrote “Men in Black II” and came from TV’s “The Golden Girls,” is the first name listed, which likely means he wrote the first version of the script. Then there’s two very notable names: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor.
That’s right, the Oscar-winning writing team of Omaha native Payne and his longtime partner Taylor took their considerable skills and made “Chuck and Larry” into a real movie. It’s still funny, but it’s got some smarts, and it is far from exploitative or offensive.
Here’s the setup: Sandler and James are best buddies, firefighters who go running into burning buildings together, risking their lives to save others and having a good time doing so. But Larry Valentine (James) has lost his wife, leaving him as a single dad raising two kids.
That’s not so much the problem as the fact that Larry failed to make the right changes in the paperwork for his retirement/insurance and now there’s a chance that he will have to quit firefighting to guarantee his children’s financial security.
Larry and Chuck Levine (Sandler) think they’ve found a loophole in the regulations. If they become a gay couple, they qualify for domestic benefits under the city of New York’s policies, and then Valentine can remedy his error and stay on the job.
So Chuck moves in with Larry and the kids. But the city sends inspector Clinton Fitzer (Steve Buscemi at his most ratlike) to monitor them. Fitzer, of course, sees the relationship as a scam.
That forces Chuck and Larry ever deeper into their fakery, which becomes even trickier when their station’s Captain Tucker (Dan Aykroyd) expresses his suspicions that the duo is up to no good and Chuck starts falling for their attorney Alex (Jessica Biel), who thinks he’s her gay friend.
Director Dennis Dugan, who made “Big Daddy” and “Happy Gilmore” but is also responsible for last year’s bottom 10 stinkball “The Benchwarmers,” gets the tone right here. There’s plenty of comedy, but Dugan and the screenplay keep things focused on the storyline that generates the humor rather than taking every potential laugh over the top.
The result is that you actually care about the characters and what happens to them. Sandler and James make a good pairing. Both of them are capable of creating a believable character while being funny, and the supporting cast, particularly Biel and Ving Rhames, who plays an intimidating firefighter with a secret, is just as good.
While it’s not a political film per se, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” can’t help but inject itself into the debate over gay marriage. The movie’s message is a rather simple one: Gays and gay couples deserve respect and equal treatment.
That’s not going to go over well with the defenders of “traditional” marriage, but it’s hard not to see that the movie has a good point as it takes the debate from the abstract to the personal. I’m not going to say exactly how that happens except to note that it took some good writing to get there without turning the picture into a political screed.
That makes “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” one of the biggest surprises of the summer. Not because it’s funny — Sandler and James would have guaranteed that, no matter the script — but because it’s a comedy that’s going to deliver a social message to big crowds. That’s a true rarity these days.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.