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I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

Directed by Dennis Dugan

Written by Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel

Classification: 14A

Rating: **

There are two movies struggling to come out, so to speak, in the gay-themed I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.

The first, roughly corresponding to its 60 minutes of exposition, revels in homophobia, anti-gay jokes and stereotypes. The second, and better half, goes all preachy on the follies of revelling in homophobia, anti-gay jokes and stereotypes. In the first reel, Adam Sandler uses the word "faggot" as a character-defining part of his Brooklynite firefighter Chuck Levine. Minutes before the end credits, he addresses audiences directly and tells them not to use it. "It's hurtful." The accepted vernacular is gay.

Anything that teaches Sandler a lesson is cool with me. But what I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry needs is not a message, but a messenger who knows how to deliver it. Somewhere between its loutish humour and laudable sentiments are the traces of a good buddy movie that could, at the very least, have been harmless summer fun.

Instead, it becomes an equal-opportunity offender, slapping right wingers on the wrist while, much to said right wingers' expectations, reducing homosexuality to its lowest common denominators: dance parties, shopping sprees and musicals. No wonder Chuck and Larry are New York firefighters: There are many flamers in this picture to keep firehouses in all five boroughs busy for months.

I have to say that the movie did offend me — not as a gay man but as a writer. It's lazy and clumsy screenwriting that becomes all the more inexcusable when you factor in the three writers (Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor) attached to the project and its 10 years in development.

So where did the time and manpower go? Well, into the story of Larry Valentine (Kevin James of TV's The King of Queens), a recently widowed firefighter and father of two who discovers that, due to some red tape, he can't name his own children as insurance beneficiaries. When he learns that same-sex domestic partnership is one way of getting around the bureaucrats in City Hall, he calls in a big favour from his buddy Chuck. It just so happens that Larry has saved Chuck's life a few minutes earlier so it's payback time. When the city suspects foul play and sends in fraud inspectors whose job include determining how gay is their garbage, the boys' lawyer (played by Jessica Biel, also the love interest) suggests a trip to Canada where they can get legally married.

The rest of the plot doesn't matter. What is more rewarding is following the film as it zigs and zags its way from a premise that belongs more to a 1960s Rock Hudson-Doris Day bedroom comedy to our modern sensibilities in the 21st century. Indeed, you'd have to go back to the sixties and, say, Send Me No Flowers or Lover Come Back to find a straight woman with a less-attuned gaydar than Biel's lawyer character. While you're in a sixties mood, cast your mind back to Mickey Rooney's buck-toothed Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's as a role model for Rob Schneider's (uncredited) cameo as an Asian minister in a Niagara Falls wedding chapel.

But if the Schneider scenes show the movie's baser instincts, the Biel sequences are its higher aspirations. There are about 20 minutes or so in the middle of the film where her scenes with Sandler — a wordless sequence where they go shopping is nicely handled by director Dennis Dugan — work well while hinting at the wasted potential of Chuck & Larry.

Luckily, that's not the only pleasant surprise hiding in the film. James is actually quite touching and believable as a doting father who'll do anything for his children, including, in the movie's lingo, marrying a dude. The film denies him any kind of sexual persona in order to beef up Chuck's machismo. But it's James who exudes the kind of screen charisma that, for years now, I've been trying in find in Sandler.

With I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, I, and countless like-minded others, give up.