“Franks and beans! Franks and beans!”

Justin’s rating: air! AIIIIR! I can’t BREATHE!

Justin’s review: I waited for almost four months after this movie came out to see it. Then I saw it twice in one week, permanently rupturing my diaphragm. Remember when I said Dirty Work was the funniest new film in 1998? Scratch that and scribble in There’s Something About Mary.

Ted (Ben Stiller) harbors a lifelong love for Mary (Cameron Diaz), ever since missing an opportunity to woo her as a teen. Now a sad sack of an adult, he goes down to Florida to make one last play for her affection. But it’s going to be anything but fiendishly complicated, as it seems that everyone from an amoral P.I. (Matt Dillon) to one of Mary’s patients to Brett Favre is chasing Mary as well.

Some comedies are “quoters,” making their laughs from great one-liners. There’s Something About Mary is a “scener,” I suppose. It builds up several great scenes and then milks them for all they’re worth. These scenes, including one empathically painful zipper scene, just about made me and my friends pass out because we could not breathe. I’m in church, the next day, and still snickering as I recall how Dillon jump-starts the pooch. Just perfect!

As a Farrelly brothers flick, it should go without saying that Mary is a tad offensive. But don’t let that stop you, if you’ve got a twisted sense of humor.

Kyle’s rating: I saw this in the theater four times! I don’t see Bond films four times!

Kyle’s review: What can I say? There’s Something About Mary is not only a fantastically funny movie, it’s also one to talk about with your friends afterwards and laugh about all the crazy shenanigans over a buffet dinner. Before I even saw this movie I heard about some of the jokes and situations from an increasingly-incoherent-from-laughter friend, who managed to blurt out something about the Green Bay Packers before he ran off, presumably to vomit. But I digress.

Ben Stiller portrays the kind of loser writer dude nobody wants to own up to being but can secretly relate to. The object of his affection through high school and beyond is Cameron Diaz, who portrays the greatest type of woman you can find and manages to be incredibly smart while completely naïve to being pursued by endless stalkers. Matt Dillon is the bad boy, who is asked by Ben to locate Cameron (Mary) and decides he wants her for himself.

You’ll stain your seat from the opening high school sequence, and calm down as the modern story unfolds, only to start laughing uncontrollably again. Fantastic fun all around, you’ll never look at certain bodily fluids or your high school crush the same way again.