Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo: Critic Reviews

The world thanks you, Rob Schneider.

In his 1999 debut, Deuce Bigalow emerged as a shameless beach bum, driving a clunker in a land of Porsche Cayennes, cleaning the scum from the fish tanks of the rich and famous.

All he has left of her is a prosthetic leg, which he totes around devotedly. Yes, that's the kind of inane humor we're dealing with. But, amazingly, amidst the smutty silliness, there are some laughs.

With this latest exercise in cynicism, however, it's not Deuce's satisfied clientele, but the audience, that gets the shaft.

Sorry, Deuce fans, but Schneider's faux-sexy alter ego is back with a thud, not a bang.

It's an unimaginative, mean-spirited gross-out that forgot to bring the funny.

Jokes that were barely funny the first time around -- like Griffin's endlessly resourceful terminology for male prostitutes and their anatomy -- now feel as tired as Deuce after a heavily booked weekend.

Lest someone cry 'pompous puritan,' let's quickly state that irreverence is often at the heart of inspired comedy. But this flick's flamboyant political incorrectness is more malicious than mischievous.

Schneider, who co-wrote the script, has succeeded in making a film that's nearly review-proof: Most of the dialogue -- packed with names for fictitious sex acts and the gigolos who perfect them -- is unrepeatable in a newspaper.

Aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience.

Schneider, one of the luckier of all Saturday Night Live alums who now make millions in the movies, may well be a fine fellow and excellent company on the set, but on screen he's blank affability incarnate.

It's good to know someone can still make a good stupid movie, a movie that knows how to laugh at itself instead of merely catering to mankind's lowest instincts.

There's nothing wrong with stupid, gross-out humor if it's funny. But if it's not funny, all you're left with is stupid and gross.

Rude, crude and, uh, cosmopolitan, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo waves the flag for R-rated politically incorrect studio comedy but doesn't top the laugh ratio of the first Deuce misadventure.

Vile and laughless.

Least imaginative of all -- the TV-commercial director they hired to film it. Yeah, his name is Bigelow, Mike Bigelow. That must have been a real knee-slapper of a meeting.

A happily idiotic sequel.

Schneider has little to offer as a leading man besides a goofy grin and a willingness to be sprayed with bodily fluids.

What is most annoying is the sequel's capability of inducing laughter even as one hates oneself for so easily succumbing to the total silliness of it all.

Director Mike Bigelow maintains a mercifully swift pace, and while the film's humor is deliberately as crass as humanly possible, it is not truly mean-spirited, even though Amsterdam is depicted as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" scrapes the bottom of the barrel and licks all around the sides.

This is gross-out without the gags (other than the stomach-churning variety)