Tuesday, 11:20pm, Comedy Centra
*There’s Something About Mary* (1998) is one of those films that slipped a love potion into the punch bowl of late-’90s comedy, and nobody’s been quite the same since. Directed by the Farrelly brothers, the film hurls together romantic misadventure, slapstick calamity, and a dash of grotesque charm, all wrapped around a tale of unrequited high school love that somehow snowballs into stalkers, sleuths, and truly unforgettable hair gel. Ben Stiller plays Ted, the hapless everyman still pining for his prom date Mary (Cameron Diaz), while Matt Dillon's gloriously sleazy private eye, Pat Healy, turns the creep factor up to eleven. It's a comedy of errors, populated by characters so weirdly earnest that their awfulness somehow circles back to endearing.
What really elevates *There’s Something About Mary*, apart from its obsession with bodily fluids and zipper-related trauma, is its surprisingly heartfelt soundtrack. Jonathan Richman, once frontman of The Modern Lovers and patron saint of proto-punk whimsy, appears throughout as a sort of Greek chorus, strumming away on his guitar with songs that underscore the film's romantic longing and absurdist tone. His acoustic ditties like “True Love is Not Nice” and “Let Her Go Into the Darkness” are both musically simple and thematically perfect, balancing irony with genuine emotion in the same way the film itself does. It's one of those rare instances where the soundtrack isn't just background noise—it's baked right into the narrative structure.
Though it's rooted in the rom-com genre, *There’s Something About Mary* is also a bizarre cousin to the screwball antics of *Raising Arizona* or the cheerfully crude sensibilities of *National Lampoon’s Vacation*. And let's not forget, in true Farrelly fashion, there’s an undercurrent of sincere affection for oddballs and outcasts. Diaz's Mary isn't just a dream girl—she’s a proper sci-fi trope of her own: the unattainable muse who's also a sports-loving, intellectually curious, dog-saving unicorn. If you squint a bit, it's practically a romantic comedy filtered through a Monty Python sketch, scored by a New England troubadour, and wrapped up in a zany chase film. Truly, there’s *something* about it.
- Noel Chambers