Cinema: Diaz-zling!

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There’s surely something about Cameron Diaz; everyone’s crazy about her. Maybe it’s the throaty laugh, the sinewy silhouette, the radiant smile that seems to wonder at the edges if you really think she’s all that gorgeous. Well, she is–and a fine comic actress too. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, she outdazzled and outcuted Julia Roberts, no contest. Now she has five men–four pathetic losers and Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre–drooling over her in Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s latest assault on the already benumbed taste buds of the American moviegoer.

Spanning 13 years and about 463 gross-out jokes (74 of which are funny), There’s Something About Mary details the hapless love of can’t-catch-a-break Ted (Ben Stiller) for smart, tomboyish, good-hearted Mary (Diaz). He tracks her from Rhode Island to Miami Beach with precious little help from an eczematous friend (Chris Elliott), a sleazy detective (Matt Dillon) and an invalid Brit (Lee Evans).

Viewers of Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin will think themselves prepared for this new Farrelly farrago. They will be mistaken. Not since John Waters’ early X-rated farces has a movie so reveled in low humor: a scrotum in zipperlock, a genital-attack dog, an icicle earring made of seminal fluids, plus innumerable chicken-choking and dolphin-flogging references.

Any review is irrelevant to this movie; it is either above criticism or beneath contempt. But for those who park their sense and sensibility at the ‘plex door, there’s plenty to enjoy in the performances, the rowdy innocence of the whole thing, the closing sing-along of “Build Me Up Buttercup”–and the vision of Cameron Diaz in giggly, gangly bloom.