I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: Critic Reviews

This movie encourages sensitivity by hitting everyone over the head with its humor hammer.

Sporadically funny, casually sexist, blithely racist and about as visually sophisticated as a parking-garage surveillance video.

My faith in a beneficent God, never strong, has been shattered by news that Alexander Payne contributed to the screenplay for this horrific new Adam Sandler vehicle.

With a tacked-on PC message and leaden attempts at humor, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is a movie that gives marriage, homosexuality, friendship, firefighters, children and nearly everything else a bad name.

Essentially, Chuck & Larry is an oafish chance for audiences to laugh at gay-bashing jokes and then feel morally redeemed for doing so.

The movie is often stupid. But coming from an industry institutionally terrified of being honest about its own sexuality, it feels brave, going a step further than 'not that there's anything wrong with that.'

Tremendously savvy in its stupid way, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is as eloquent as Brokeback Mountain, and even more radical.

Does anybody laugh at this stuff anymore?

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry manages to insult gays, straights, men, women, children, African-Americans, Asians, pastors, mailmen, insurance adjusters, firemen, doctors -- and fans of show music. That's championship stuff.

In the credits, the filmmakers acknowledge Brooklyn firefighters who died on 9/11. It's an honorable gesture, but what of the previous two hours? What of the scenes portraying firemen as cigar-chomping, homophobic, misogynistic chumps?

In the spirit of uncivil unions, I now denounce you, Chuck & Larry.

It all boils down to a horrible waste of talent.

If Dugan's crude, occasionally effective effort ends up chipping away at America's moron class regarding gay rights, that'll be nice. But even unrepentant homophobes deserve funnier.

For every stale homophobic joke there's a sheepish nod to political correctness, and just to be safe director Dennis Dugan plays the firefighter card at every opportunity.

I feel compelled to apologize about laughing at Chuck and Larry, like many Sandler films less a movie than a fistful of funny moments.

I now pronounce you terminally confused.

This is indeed an equal opportunity movie. But it's also a movie that beats its one joke into the ground.

If there's a saving grace, and there is, it's that the movie strives, in its often-awkward way, for acceptance. And how bad can that be?

Relentlessly juvenile and awash in stereotypes.

If there were a Straight Lack-of-Pride Parade, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry could be the grand marshal. The movie isn't insulting to homosexuals but to comedy.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is a pretend-to-be-gay firefighter's farce that is entirely too stupid and crude to tote its alleged 'message' about tolerance through the flames to safety.

Chuck and Larry remains something close to remarkable: an Adam Sandler movie that manages to be crude and caring in equal measure. In the multiplex, this is called progress.

An equal-opportunity offender, slapping right wingers on the wrist while, much to said right wingers' expectations, reducing homosexuality to its lowest common denominators.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry works hard at not being offensive. It just doesn't work hard enough at being good.

It's a shock to the system when this example of puerile comedy turns into a pulpit-pounding sermon. The film's sledgehammer approach makes it more immature than earnest.