“Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” is exactly what you expect it to be. It’s crass, it’s gross, it goes for the easy joke at every opportunity, it – ooh, the weather girl is topless! Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, right. This movie is fucking dumb, okay? And apparently, based on the audience that attended this screening, there are tons of people who love this shit. At the same time, even these very, very easily amused people groaned on more than one occasion at the cheap shots the filmmakers took. Is there anyone left who thinks that jokes about Asians having small dicks are funny? Yes? Then come on down, good sirs. I have just the movie for you.
We pick up with Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow living a sorry existence as a widower fish enthusiast, having lost his wife to a shark attack on their honeymoon. His old buddy T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) calls him up from Amsterdam, where he’s set up business as a low-rent pimp. A ridiculous mishap that implicates Bigalow prompts him to skip town and visit T.J., and soon after arriving, man-whores start turning up dead. The evidence points towards T.J., and Deuce decides to get back into the game in order to clear his friend’s name. Along the way, he meets a sweet babe with OCD (Hanna Verboom, who’s a dead ringer for Mischa Barton), a girl with a voice box – drinking wine, no less – and a woman with a penis for a nose. You don’t even want to know what happens when she sneezes.
But of course, you know exactly what happens when she sneezes. (For the record, it looks less like semen than it does like mashed potatoes.) In fact, you know every joke that’s in this movie, and that’s its problem. The opening scene, with a man-whore receiving payment for the many people he pleasured the night before, is a riff on a joke Steve Martin did on “The Tonight Show” 30 years ago. Thirty years ago. Plus, the nepotism here is sickening; Fred Armisen, Norm MacDonald and Adam Sandler all make appearances in one form or another. I will admit, though, that the one joke that made me laugh out loud came at MacDonald’s expense, just before the closing credits. That’s right, the movie’s funniest moment didn’t come until the movie was seconds away from ending.
The only thing you really need to know about “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” is the timing of this screening. Most of the studios hold their screenings between Monday and Wednesday of the week the movie is scheduled to be released. Some studios will run them the previous Thursday, out of respect for the other screenings for movies that come out that Friday. “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” chose to run their screening the night before its release, in a remote northwest suburb. This suited me fine, as I live ten minutes from said theater. But the studio was clearly trying to make it as inconvenient as possible for the press to get their reviews finished in time to make the deadline for Friday’s paper, thus leaving the public in the dark about the “quality” of their movie for at least one more day. Translation: they’re trying to sucker you out of your money. Don’t give them the opportunity.
1/5 Stars
Starring: Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin, Fred Armisen, Hanna Verboom, Jeroen Krabbe
Director: Mike Bigelow
DVD Features:
The widescreen, “special edition” DVD release of “European Gigolo” features a good deal of bonus material, but none of it is very interesting, including two deleted scenes, a Comedy Central “Reel Comedy” promo, and an incredibly short, two-part making-of featurette.
