The Adam Sandler-Kevin James reverse La Cage Aux Folles pour pension bennies comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is complicated art. At first glance, it is a negligible crudity, yet another attempt to tap light hearted homophobia in order to shakedown mainstream American audiences for those precious first weekend bucks. Yet, the longer the movie wears on, the less it seems an exercise in "gayface" than a sly metaphysical comment on the ignorance of a broad, broad swath of heterosexual male-dom.
Chuck (Sandler) and Larry (James), two Brooklyn-based firefighters, fake a domestic partnership to secure survivor benefits for Larry's following an on-the-job scare. The complications are thus: a) they're not gay - in fact Chuck's voracious heterosexual appetites are played for great sport (we can argue about gays, but there's no denying that women still get the short end of the stick - stick, get it? - here), b) they're firemen, one of those blue-collar, close-proximity professions that, in movie shorthand, serve as a fertile breeding ground for homophobia, and c) a city investigator (a wasted Steve Buscemi - ironically himself a one-time New York firefighter) suspects their domestic bliss is a hoax. The movie thus forces Chuck and Larry to (literally) sleep in the bed they have made by flaunting their gay bona fides at least until the storm blows over.
This set-up is keenly executed, as James and Sandler (who is, incidentally, far more agreeable here than he has been in ages) eschew cheap "swish" caricatures and opt instead for a more, um, serious (?) exploration of what the middlebrow red blooded American male, accepting of homosexuality though still uncomfortable with close proximity to it, thinks is gay. Sure, there are moments that veer uncomfortably close to condescension - especially when Chuck punches out an anti-gay demonstrator (The Daily Show's Rob Corddry in a pointless cameo - if I had a sidebar I could explore all of the comedy talent squandered here in ancillary roles), implying, probably unintentionally, that gays need a strong heterosexual figure to stand up for them - obviously these dudes never heard of the Stonewall riots. There's also the obvious message clunkiness - evaluate people for who they are, not what they are, etc. For the most part, however, Chuck and Larry is an unexpectedly sweet film, a kind of Capra-meets-Farrelly Brothers version of Black Like Me firmly ensconced in the pre-Apatow comedic tradition. Indeed, in it's own way it's an incredibly subversive film as well, subtly portraying two men sleeping in the same bed, running a household, and raising a perfectly well-adjusted family. If that's not as potent a cinematic argument for legalizing gay marriage as has been aired in mall cineplexes yet, I'll be damned.
