Say It Isn't So

Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl cuts boy's ear off, boy and girl get engaged, boy and girl are siblings.\nJust another normal day in the twisted world of the Farrelly brothers, right? Wrong. Do not be mistaken: "Say It Isn't So" is neither written nor directed by the talented duo who made us laugh ourselves silly with "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary." They only produced it. That is the first problem with this ridiculously stupid movie. \nThere is a big difference between trying to be funny and ending up as stupid, and writing stupid in a smart way. "Dumb and Dumber" might have been "dumb" humor, but not any bozo could sit down and do it. There was real thought put into that stupidity, something that was missing here.\nAlso missing were Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Woody Harrelson, Jeff Daniels or any other good male lead. Gilly Noble (Chris Klein) is sweet, innocent and pathetic, but he just isn't funny. Gilly falls in love with Jo (Heather Graham), a beautiful but horrible barber who snips the tip off his ear. But Jo's parents tell them they are siblings so that they won't marry. When Gilly discovers the truth, he takes off and tries to keep her from marrying her ex-boyfriend. While the premise is good, the movie is not. And I wonder how it might have been had it been written and directed by the Farrelly brothers.\nThere is a lot of time to wonder in between the laughs, which are sparse. Once Gilly gets on the road, the movie loses its focus and just becomes a lot of gross-out gags that don't advance the plot. The writers have a sense of what could be funny but just don't know how to carry out the jokes. \nFor example, on the road Gilly meets Dig McCaffey (Orlando Jones), a heroic, legless pilot. This has funny written all over it. There are a million crude, tasteless things you could do with a legless man. The film just doesn't do any of them. Dig's and Jo's parents (Sally Field and Richard Jenkins) provide the film's funniest moments, but they are spread out and independent of one another. \nThe film is more frustrating than funny, but the really frustrating thing is wasting $8 to see it.