Saving Silverman: An absurd romp of a movie
|
by Alex Knapp
Tech News Staff |
|---|
A long time ago, in a Hollywood far, far away, there was a time when gross-out sex romps came only once every couple of years. Now they're coming out almost every other day. The biggest obstacle that most of these movies face, aside from not being funny, is that they're utterly unbelievable, yet most expect us to take them seriously. So it's refreshing when a gross-out comedy comes along that in no way expects the audience to think that its world has any relation to reality.
Our story begins with our heroes, Wayne (Steve Zahn), J.D. (Jack Black), and Darren Silverman (Jason Biggs, in his usual role as a not-so-bright romantic interest), three friends who have known each other since childhood. Grown up now, the three are in their mid-twenties, but continuing their slacker lifestyle from their teenage years. Wayne owns his own pest control business, J.D. is a cashier at Subway, and Darren is a Bingo reader at the local nursing home. However, those are merely side projects for their true love, Diamonds in the Rough, their Neil Diamond tribute band.
Interrupting their beer-bong and nacho lifestyle is Judith (Amanda Peet), a relationship therapist who starts dating Darren. However, things soon go awry for the trio, when they realize that Judith is a stone-cold psychopath. "He's my puppet," she explains. "And I'm the puppet master."
Wayne and J.D.'s efforts to "rescue" Darren from his relationship with Judith and re-unite him with the woman of his dreams, Sandy (Amanda Detmer), comprise the rest of the movie's antics. The movie starts a long string of one over-the-top joke after the next, involving such wide-ranging fields as masturbation, butt-cheek implants, weight-lifting nuns, graverobbing, and macho football coaches.
Simply put, if you're a guy, you'll probably like this movie, and if you're a girl, you probably won't. That's just the truth. But since I'm a guy, there's a lot to like here. The chemistry between Steve Zahn and Jack Black (who has yet to do wrong in a movie) is hysterical. There's one particular flashback in the movie that parodies about thirty Van Damme movies. Bottom line-lots of guy humor, good-looking girls, and Neil Diamond saves the day. What more can you ask from a movie?
| 