Oh, my god, they killed Jonathan! You bastards!

There's Something About Mary

(1998)

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," Polonius tells Laertes, "for chances are between the friend of a friend you lend your DVD to and the friend herself, it'll be a year and a half before you see it again." I exaggerate: it was only from Thanksgiving '06 until last month, but I sure was glad to get it back.

That Jonathan Richman's is the first voice we hear and the first face we see--and that he functions throughout as a Greek chorus--was a bonus for me when I first saw this, and so it remains. Jonathan changed my musical life in 1981 the first time I heard "I'm Straight," and years later my then-wife Jennie Tonic and my friend Pablo el Amante Moderno and I got to sit w/ Jonathan during a break in his show at Mabel's in Champaign, Ill., one night, Jennie trying to talk Greek with him, since he'd just come back from there. Next day I saw him walking to the Greyhound station and honked and waved, and he smiled and waved back, but I missed the opportunity of a lifetime to yell out the window, "Jonathan, you're crazy for taking that bus," a lyric he'd sung the night before from his then-current album Jonathan Goes Country. Anyway, I don't love the film only for JR, but that would be reason enough.

Since the last time I'd seen the film, I'd also met Chris Elliott, whose sister I work with--making this without a doubt the only Hollywood film with two people in the cast I've hung out with. I'd also watched Deadwood and thus gotten to know the work of W. Earl Brown, and that was a revelation because I'd always assumed, knowing that the Farrellys like to involve their friends--especially handicapped ones--in their films, that Warren was actually played by someone mentally challenged.

Bottom line, though: this remains one of the smartest of the "dumb" romcom subgenre. But don't bother with the extended version on the DVD: the theatrical version's less is more.