My Review of "There's Something About Mary"

There's Something About Mary is a comedy that came out back in 1998. At the time this movie was revolutionary and brought out a new type of comedy to a whole new generation. Unfortunately not a lot of this humor translate well into the social climate that we live in nowadays. Still I was able to enjoy a lot of the fun that I used to have with this movie. Though I can see how this movie can be quite problematic.

The story starts out I guess in the 80s as this is a 90's film. Our main protagonist Ted is then a teenager. He's navigating his awkward teen years trying to find a date to the dance in his senior year. Though he's a nice guy, nice doesn't cut it as an adolescent. That is until we see this girl Mary. She's the girl of all the guy's affections.

Out of some miracle Mary notices Ted and she asks him out to the big dance. Overjoyed, Ted gets ready and tells all his friends that he's going to go to the dance with the most beautiful girl in the school. This of course never happens. Through a series of very unfortunate and embarrassing circumstances Ted is taken to the hospital. Mary eventually moved away and the two never saw each other again.

Years later Ted is telling this story to his psychiatrist who isn't even paying attention. I loved the fact that Ted is kind of this Rodney Dangerfield character where no one gives him any respect. A lot of the fun is seeing his character constantly being pushed around like Charlie Brown. They really make him out to be an underdog character.

Ted isn't exactly an angel either though. His obsession over Mary results in him hiring a private investigator, Healy, to find Mary. Due to Mary's irresistible nature, Healy soon finds himself fallen for her as well. This starts a cascade of lies and deceit that start to snowball. Healy for one is one of the most pathological liars of them all.

We then have a tug of war of men pining for Mary's affection all without her knowledge. There's good fun in their game of lies but looking at it today it looks very creepy. This was always the case but back then we didn't really look through eyes of victims like we try to do nowadays.

In this movie Mary can be seen as a trophy to be won instead of a person with her own emotions and thoughts. I can see how the adolescent version of me loved this movie back in the day. This movie was totally geared toward my demographic at the time it was made. It definitely shows with the type of humor portrayed in this movie.

That's why I would say that not everyone will enjoy this movie as much as I did. There is an air of nostalgia in this movie but there is a feeling of guilt for liking this movie as well. It divides me as I know this isn't a movie that people should take seriously but young minds are easily influenced. Still this movie has good intentions and it's noticeable if you really watch what this movie is trying to say.

Overall, I feel guilty but I still enjoyed this movie. It is radically offensive and changed the type of humor a lot of people had back in those days. The bar was set to a different location and we kept on trying to get to those next levels until it wasn't right to. I still have to give this movie a 7 out of 10 only because it's still able to entertain me that much. Again this is not for everyone and I can see people protesting this movie.