There’s Something About Mary (Bluray Review)

Main Feature

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched There’s Something About Mary since its cinematic release back in 1998. This was the third directorial success in a row for the Farrelly brothers after Dumb & Dumber and Kingpin and it helped cement the reputation they have today.

Matt Dillon’s stand out performance as the arrogant and devious Healy, along with his role in Wild Things that same year, did wonders for his career which had slowed down since he burst onto the scene in such a big way during the Eighties. It seems that Ben Stiller is one of those comedy actors that people either love or hate which positions him alongside the likes of Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and Adam Sandler. As far as I’m concerned Stiller has more in his locker and he showcases his comedic diversity in this film, Zoolander, Starsky & Hutch, and more recently in Tropic Thunder while Ferrell and the others tend to offer different shades of the same character. This brings me to Cameron Diaz who doesn’t provide as many laughs as Stiller and Dillon but despite her enormous Joker-like grin she is very pretty and because of this she fits the title role well.

I have never doubted that this film provokes many laughs and in that respect this is a success but I didn’t notice any visual improvement over the standard DVD and I feel that the Blu-ray format is wasted here. The worst thing about the film by far has to be the pair of idiot musicians who pop up from time to time and give us an annoying rendition of a terrible song. I understand that they are meant to be annoying and that it’s a nod towards Medieval singing bards but rather than making me laugh this only succeeds in making me want to tear my ears off.

Extras

I’ll only mention the title menu if the screen impresses me or upsets me in some way and in this case it’s very much the latter as we’re greeted to a mind-numbing loop of that annoying singing idiot I mention above. I’d not consider this much of an issue if not for the fact that “Build Me Up Buttercup” is something I always associate with the film and would have been a far better choice of music.

Speaking of which there is an extra named “up a tree with Jonathan Richman and Tommy Larkins” which gives us needless information on how and when the annoying duo met.

“getting behind Mary” is a 40 minute documentary of behind-the-scenes footage in which the cast members gush over how fantastic the Farrelly brothers are and how incredibly funny every single thing in the film is. This ultimately amounts to a bunch of clips showing just how awkward and clumsy everyone was while filming certain scenes and I don’t think that was the aim of the documentary.

There is a shorter “backstory” documentary which explains how the film came to be and is once again filled with people patting themselves on the back. “comedy central: reel comedy” is hosted by Harland Williams and I think it’s meant to be funny but it’s even more clumsy and awkward than the “getting behind Mary” documentary.

“puffy, boobs, and balls” with special effects designer Tony Gardner and actress Lin Shaye is something I found interesting. The pair seemed comfortable talking together on screen and it looked like they were having a lot of fun.

I like when a music video is included as an extra but while I like the song “every day should be a holiday” from The Dandy Warhols I think the video, especially the claymation, is a horrible mess.

The “out-takes” extra is a complete let-down because perhaps only 30 seconds show things we haven’t seen before, another 30 seconds show clips which were in the film and weren’t out-takes at all, and the remainder are clips you’ll see from watching the documentaries. And last but not least is the “build me up buttercup” karaoke extra which is nice because it means the song is at hand if you feel like listening to it but that doesn’t change the fact it should have been used as the title music.

Summary

This is one of the rare instances when I feel the extras are so poor that it harms the overall score. There are a lot of extras on the disc but most of these are pointless and look and feel incredibly dated. I like the film and I still find it funny even after watching it countless times since its release but I’m also reviewing the Blu-ray package and for me the lack of interesting extras must bring the score down. If you already own this on standard DVD I can see no good reason why you should add this Blu-ray version to your collection.