Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo
(2005)
Dir: Mike Bigelow
Why flaming shit like this gets past the dry-erase board is far beyond me, but here goes: Rob Schneider, former SNL cast member and comic genius behind the "makin' copies" guy, returns as Deuce Bigelow, a fledgling man whore whose relevance and affability evaporated well before 1999's Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo reached the end credits. This go around finds Bigelow journeying to Amsterdam and making a return to the world of male prostitution at the insistence of his friend T.J. (Eddie Griffin, remarkably managing to be even more grating and fungal than Schneider). T.J. has been framed in a series of Gigolo murders and he needs Deuce’s help finding the real killer. Yeah. There's also a love interest for Bigelow in the form of an obsessive-compulsive Dutch girl named Eva (Hanna Verboom). Conveniently, her uncle is the Detective on the case of the Gigolo killer--played by Jeroen Krabbe in what amounts to the film’s only memorable performance.
The plot here is disposable. It only serves to fill the spaces between half-wit, raunchy jokes. For instance, one of Bigelow's clients is a woman who was born in Chernobyl and as a result of radiation, has a penis in place of a nose. When she sneezes hand lotion rifles everywhere. Witness the intellectual tenor of this movie. Another one of his ladies has a tracheotomy, a gag which is milked dry to little avail. If you think that a certain cock-nose isn't going to end up in a certain throat hole, I apologize for ruining the surprise.
There are also a handful of jokes about America's "war on terror." Early in the film, a flag waving American tourist praises Bush and is pelted with bricks. Later on, in a long, drawn out scene, a Frenchman who taunts Bigelow—asking "What are you going to do? Look for weapons of mass destruction in my pockets?"--shares a similar fate. The jokes are totally base and obvious. European Gigolo seems to believe that if multiple takes on the issue are presented, transcendental comedy will be born. It's nothing a third-grader couldn't come up with after watching Fox News and Looney Tunes. The inclusion of such material is surprising, though none of it is daring at all.
In the same vein, the movie seems to think that making repeated jokes about Asian men having little dicks is okay as long as it's counter balanced by a gags concerning the butthole-wizardry of a Greek gigolo. Furthering it's Quixotian quest to level the politically-correct playing field, every country and/or nationality has it's own sexual act: the Portuguese Breakfast, for instance, which involves beating an egg inside a vagina.
There's nothing admirable or creative about any of this. None of the humor has any real perspective or depth--or even zing--and it's all about as limp as Liberace's dick at the Playboy Mansion (oooh, look, I could write for Deuce Bigelow 3 !)
The fact that the majority of the audience at the screening I attended was howling with laughter represents a real national crisis. If you think that midgets getting thrown through windows is the funniest shit ever, go see this. Then throw yourself out a window.
Please.
