#191: There’s Something About Mary

Release Date: July 17th, 1998

Format: Streaming (Disney+)

Written by: Ed Decter, Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, and John J. Strauss

Directed by: Bobby and Peter Farrelly

4 Stars

The Farrelly brothers, Bobby and Peter, have an interesting legacy. To call them the most popular comedic filmmakers of the late ‘90s doesn’t really do them justice. Starting with the release of Dumb and Dumber in 1994, through Kingpin (1996), and finally hitting their career crescendo in 1998 with There’s Something About Mary, the brothers were comedy tastemakers as much as they were comedy auteurs. 

And Hollywood took note. As the calendar turned over to a new millennium, the theaters were flooded with Farrelly-inspired comedy raunch. There were American Pie movies and Road Trip movies and eventually the birth of the “Frat Pack” films (Old School, Zoolander, Starsky & Hutch, Anchorman, Wedding Crashers, and several others). 

The irony here is that the comedy film movement that the Farrellys started eventually saturated the market so heavily that it weakened the impact of their own films. By the time the films Stuck on You (2003) and The Ringer (2005) came out, the public had moved on. 

Then came Judd Apatow, and the nail was more or less driven into the Farrelly brothers’ comedy coffin. Apatow’s films were also raunch, but were generally thought to have a pathos and a character-depth that the Farrelly films lacked. Whose films are actually better and funnier, well, I guess time will have to tell. Looking back on them from 2025, pitting Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary against 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Funny People, I say advantage: Farrellys. 

Watching There’s Something About Mary tonight (for the first time in over ten years), I think it’s great. There’s a charm to it that contrasts nicely with its crudeness, and the gags are shamelessly funny. It is a bit shaggy, and runs longer than you’d think, but I think it adds to the film rather than detracts. Hanging out in Miami with all of these dirtbags is pretty damn fun, to the point that you don’t mind that it takes almost two hours for Ted to win Mary back.

Speaking of Mary, let’s give credit where credit is due: Cameron Diaz. The Farrelly brothers hinge the entire film on her. None of the film works if she can’t pull off this role, and she turns in an iconic performance. Her Mary is radiant and smart and relatable and fun, but she’s also sarcastic and silly and not too precious to be the butt of a joke (“Is that…hair gel?”).

No wonder all of these men fall in love with her. We, the audience, end up falling in love with her too.