Another loud, boisterous tale that trades in lowest-common-denominator humour and drags its (supposedly) lovable loser through one hectic scrape after another, before pitching him up into a gets-the-girl finale and none-too-considered moral: that most human folk, no matter how fat, black, tall, impotent or deviant, are basically alright. Unfortunately, much like its central character, the movie seems to spend much of its modest running time floundering on its rear.
It is often said of knockabout, low-brow comedies that all the best bits are in the trailer, and this is certainly true here. But Deuce Bigalow has managed to carve out a further distinction: not only does the trailer hold the best bits, but by the time they're surrounded with all the other guff in the film, most of the comic value has been sucked clean out of them. Even a timely Matrix lampoon isn't quite converted and many other gags, both visual and verbal, are executed with the panache of a blunt guillotine.
Held in slightly lower esteem than the pond scum he regularly scours, Deuce is an affable, wide-eyed creation, but he's no Happy Gilmore, and failing to fully emulate Adam Sandler is a telling shortfall. It's unsurprising, given the film's prevailing mood (slapstick, pants-falling-down, farty), to find Sandler's name bearing an executive producer credit, but his involvement behind the scenes is clearly no form of guarantee.
This, in fact, is perhaps the most revealing eye-opener yet on why Sandler himself is successful: when centre stage, he can somehow make a loutish performance gel with a crude but sentimental script and pull laughs from it. Deuce Bigalow, meanwhile, merely misfires all over the place, never really getting off the ground.
