Trop c'est trop

I found this movie funnier than I expected. Chris Klein and Heather Graham are adequate in the leads, and Klein's character finds himself falling in love with Graham's. When he finds out they might actually be brother and sister, they have to call it off. A while later, Klein learns that it is all a big mistake, but by this time Graham is engaged to marry another man. Klein then sets out to try to break up that wedding, getting into one jam after another, including a mental hospital, prison, and several fights with the redneck townsfolk.

If you can excuse mild raunchiness and an occassional painful-looking moment, you might like this one.

*** out of ****

This movie is typical of the raunchy comedy you can expect from Bobby & Peter Farrelly. Perhaps I haven't seen enough of their movies to make an adequate judgment, but I didn't notice anything "missing vibes" from it. There are a few surprises in it however, that could make you ask questions beginning with "Who Knew?":

Who knew Orlando Jones could be cool? If you saw his 7-Up commercials you wouldn't think he was. For the record, his character was not Jimi Hendrix, or his ghost, or some nut who thought he was Hendrix.

Who knew Sally Field could pass herself off as a villainess, and a comical one at that? Fans who like her best during her Gidget/Flying Nun years will be just as surprised as those who praise her for Sybil, Norma Rae, Places in the Heart, and similar TV-Movies & tear-jerkers.

Who knew the Farrelly Brothers would make a woman suffer so much heartbreak? In There's Something About Mary, we have Ben Stiller sobbing it up over the presumed loss of his object of desire. Here we have Heather Graham doing the same thing over a man she loves, but still believes is her brother.

Who knew an otherwise sugar sweet poem would be used as a weapon on any pets spending their final moments on earth? There's the scene where Chris Kline recites the poem he uses for abandoned animals he's about to exterminate for Heather Graham. I don't care how beautiful she thought it was, if I were any of those animals I'd be as scared of that poem as I would of the idea of being killed on the expiration date.

Anyway, this movie has a lot of sleaze, a lot of heart, and a lot of surprises. If you're not the uptight prim and proper-type, check it out.

It's a world of closets filled with pantsuits that reek of stale flatulation; of unlovely middle-aged guys with Skittle-sized warts and erratically gapped sets of teeth; of post-menopausal ladies in Midwestern pastel parkas who are themselves a symphony of eye-crossing odors; of bandaged banged-up ears and store-bought vocoders for stroke victims and bugeyed cripples who look no better falling down than standing up. It is, to quote Devo, "a beautiful world! For you! For you! Not ME!"

Into this ironic Shriners' Parade of Middle American ugliness--the true warts-and-all U.S. not seen in a cinema that spends most of its time on Manhattan's mean streets and in Beverly Hills High--a tiny flashlight of adolescent sweetness longs to shine. It's the true-blue, high-school-sweetheart brand of love that the Farrelly Brothers interpose as contrast to their fat-guy-in-a-Dacron-shirt cosmos. This is what gives the Farrellys' movies a tender/hysterical tone that recalls the alternations between beachside passivity and horrific violence in the movies of Beat Takeshi. It is their signature structure.

SAY IT ISN'T SO is not one of their own--it's jobbed-out to some writer friends of the brothers, who have done a serviceable impersonation of the grotesqueries of the Farrellys. SAY IT is a programmer--it feels like a B movie, a bottom-half-of-the-double-biller, which is a nice, unusual feeling in this day and age (where genuinely B material is given a Big Movie importance). Chris Klein is the orphan longing to find his mom, and Heather Graham is the hopelessly inept hair stylist who loves him; DNA tests and stamped documents prove it after they have consummated their love--they're brother and sister. But incest is the least of this movie's concerns. The filmmakers strain to crank up the Farrelly Machine--which involves a new variant on "punching a cow," shoving a paralyzed stroke victim's face into the smelly rump of an ugly truck driver, and a gag involving Sally Field's underarms that still makes me gag just thinking about it.

Sweetness rules, though: Graham and Klein are ideal as John Mellencamp's Jack and Diane. And after sitting through the massaging blandnesses of THE MEXICAN and HEARTBREAKERS, this movie's honest movement toward the emetic is refreshing. It shakes the audience up a little bit, rather than puts them to sleep. SAY IT doesn't approximate the high points of SOMETHING ABOUT MARY or KINGPIN, but its evocation of a world you won't see on VH-1 stays with you like the smell of grandma's doilies, mothballs, and brick-hard Brach's Candies.

This was a nice silly movie that had a few laughs and brought me back to the gold old days of the 00s the story was new easy to follow nice cast I happen to really like the guy from American pie and heather graham she's pretty and a great actress also was pretty good in the spy who shagged me the only actress i really really really really didn't like was sally field she over acted so much that it got very irritating Orlando Jones was the funniest as the amputee all the jokes landed right and it had a very nice ending being cure and vulgar didn't take away from it anyone who wants a silly but light hearten movie to watch take a look at this it nothing special but you will end happy

I can't believe the lame reviews IMDB readers gave this film.

It's an excellent comedy from an excellent film team, and I'd rank it right up there alongside all the other great Farrelly Brothers films... though they didn't actually direct this one... here it's James B. Rogers who appears to have been assistant director on all the rest of Peter and Bobby's major releases except for Shallow Hal.

Along with The Coen Brothers, and Todd Solondz, the Farrelly Brother's are one of the best things going in American film these days. The fact that so many people claim to be offended by "Say It Isn't So" only makes me like the movie more, and want to see it again. (I've seen it twice so far).

Chris Klein deserves a special mention here as the few positive reviews credit the spectacularly funny Orlando Jones, Sally Field and of course, Heather Graham ... who are all fine... but Chris Klein appears to have been overlooked, and he really shines in SAY IT ISN'T SO, which is the first film I saw him in.

Check out "Election" w/ Chris Klein, Matthew Broderick and Drew Barrymore, for more good laughs.

There were brilliant gags well-paced throughout, but just recalling Orlando Jones (Digs) bush pilot business card alone puts a big smile on my face. 9/10