Say It Isn’t So (2001) 20th Century Fox/Comedy RT: 95 minutes Rated R (strong sexual content, crude humor, language) Director: J.B. Rogers Screenplay: Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow Music: Mason Daring Cinematography: Mark Irwin Release date: March 23, 2001 (US) Cats: Heather Graham, Chris Klein, Orlando Jones, Richard Jenkins, Sally Field, John Rothman, Jack Plotnick, Eddie Cibrian, Mark Pellegrino, Brent Hinkley, Henry Cho, Richard Riehle, Sarah Silverman, Brent Briscoe, Ezra Buzzington, C. Ernst Harth, Julie White, Lin Shaye, David L. Lander, Courtney Peldon. Box Office: $5.5M (US)/$12.3M (World)
Rating: ** ½
Say It Isn’t So is a perfect example of the Idiot Plot in the sense that the central conflict could easily be solved if everybody wasn’t a complete idiot. The solution is so simple and obvious, yet nobody ever thinks to do it. I know we’re talking about a crude, low-rent comedy inspired but not conceived by the Farrelly Brothers (Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary). On that basis, certain things can be excused. I just find it hard to believe nobody suggests taking the one measure that would resolve the conflict conclusively.
I’m purposely being vague about “the solution”. It would be better if I discussed the plot before I get into what’s wrong with it. Directed by J.B. Rogers (American Pie 2), Say It Isn’t So is a love story (of sorts). Lonely animal shelter employee Gilly (Klein, American Pie) finally meets the girl of his dreams, a beautiful but inept hairdresser named Jo (Graham, Boogie Nights). Their meet-cute is marked by Jo accidentally cutting off part of Gilly’s ear while cutting his hair. Love grows in its place as a result of the incident. Jo takes him home to meet her parents, self-centered Valdine (Field, Steel Magnolias) and partially paralyzed stroke victim Walter (Jenkins, There’s Something About Mary). All is well until the private detective (Briscoe, A Simple Plan) Gilly hired to locate his birth mother reaches out. It seems he’s found Gilly’s bio-mom and it’s Valdine which makes him and Jo siblings.
STOP RIGHT THERE! I have two words: DNA TEST! That’s the next logical step upon receiving such news. Most folks would want concrete proof before accepting a stranger as a long-lost family member, especially when the bearer of the news is a sleazy PI. Nobody in Say It Isn’t So ever thinks to do this. They simply accept the news as fact with Gilly’s life getting ruined in the process. His incestuous relationship with his sister turns him into the town outcast overnight. He loses his job at the animal shelter. People on the street yell rude things at him. Somebody writes “sister f***er“ in the dirt on his pick-up. Jo leaves town for Beaver, OR and (for some unexplained reason) Gilly moves in with his birth parents.
More than a year later, another bombshell is dropped on Gilly’s head. A young man (Plotnick, Chairman of the Board) shows up at the door with a birth certificate proving he’s Valdine and Walter’s son NOT Gilly meaning he’s not related to Jo after all. His former “parents” kick him out and he rushes off to Beaver to give her the good news. The problem is she’s set to marry her rich ex-boyfriend Jack (Cibrian, Third Watch), a powerful man who controls most of the town. Not wanting to blow her chance at getting at his money, Valdine reports him as a sex offender to the Beaver PD. When Jack hears Gilly is coming, he sends his dimwitted criminal brother (Pellegrino, Drowning Mona) to deal with the matter. In short, everybody is out to stop Gilly from reaching Jo with the new information. For her part, Jo is still in love with Gilly.
To think, all of this could have been avoided with a simple DNA test. On the other hand, if somebody did think of it, Say It Isn’t So would have been a short-ass movie. It’s a real catch-22, a damned if you do, damned if you don’t-type situation. But why am I sitting here seriously philosophizing about a movie as utterly stupid as Say It Isn’t So? It makes Dumb and Dumber look like an exercise in high intellect. It’s lewd, rude, crude, sophomoric and lowbrow. It has jokes about incest, masturbation, dead and live animals, body piercings and handicapped people. It’s the epitome of bad taste. But is it funny? Let’s just say I laughed more than I should have.
Say It Isn’t So has funny moments, but they’re all overshadowed by the movie’s insistence on repeatedly humiliating its protagonist, a good-natured dope who doesn’t deserve everything that happens to him over the course of the movie’s 95 minutes. Time and time again, Gilly gets into situations that leave him publically humiliated. It’s not enough everybody thinks he’s a sexual deviant; he’s made to look mentally ill as well when Valdine keeps her real son hidden away while telling Jo and others that he’s a figment of Gilly’s disturbed mind. He ends up in a mental hospital against his will. Later, he ends up with his arm stuck halfway up a cow’s bum. Onlookers laugh and jeer and call him “cow f***er“. It just goes on and on and on and on. Why can’t this guy catch a break?
Next I’ll ask the question that’s surely on everybody’s mind. What in the world is Sally Field doing in a movie like Say It Isn’t So? This is an acclaimed and respected actress with two Oscars to her name (Norma Rae and Places in the Heart). Then again, she played a flying nun early in her career. Here, she plays a perfectly awful woman who mistreats her disabled husband and schemes to make her daughter marry a man she doesn’t love for his wealth. Oh, she’s crafty alright. She may be the smartest character in the movie, but that’s like saying one of the Kardashian sisters is less annoying than the others. I stand by my original statement that everybody in Say It Isn’t So is an idiot.
HOWEVER, I did get a kick out of Orlando Brown’s (The Replacements) character, a legless pilot named Dig McCaffrey. He looks like the winner of a Jimi Hendrix lookalike contest. Gilly first meets him when he accidentally hits him with his pickup causing both of his prosthetic legs to go flying. To be fair, he was standing in the middle of the road. He always seems to show up at the right time to help Gilly out of a mess only to put him in another one.
I don’t know what to say about Graham’s character other than she’s a clueless nitwit who can’t see what a creep her fiancee really is. I guess I could say Graham has some skills as a comic actress, but she’s no substitute for Cameron Diaz.
The thing about Say It Isn’t So is that it badly wants to be a Farrelly Brothers comedy (they only produced it) and comes as close as possible to failing without actually failing. It has the basic mechanics, but none of the refinement. Still, I laughed at it. Theoretically, it could be a funnier movie. The problem is it’s redundant. Seeing Gilly get humiliated on a continual basis gets old fast. Old and aggravating. If only somebody thought of doing a DNA test, but that would go against the Idiot Plot. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t indeed.
