Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo Review

Going In:

As one of the dozen fans of the first movie I felt it was my responsibility to see the sequel and tell the world how critics are too hard on Rob Schneider! I wanted to tell the world how funny this movie is. Oh how I really wanted to say all those things…

Review:

Ok, fine. Maybe Mr Ebert did get it right. Mr Schneider, your movie really does suck. But that’s ok. I still laughed. I still cried. I laughed at how the producers and writers sat around thinking this would be hilarious. Then I cried thinking of how I had just plunked down $6.50 for a matinee.

European Gigolo follows Deuce to Amsterdam where he meets up with his old friend TJ who becomes the prime suspect in a series of man-whore killings. Deuce has to go undercover to find the killer and prove his friend’s innocence. Sounds like a perfectly normal movie, yes? Sure… until people start eating French fries out of a toilet. How’s that for potty humor?

Now I really do think Rob Schneider is hilarious, but I have to draw the line at some point. Do I draw the line at making fun of a cancer victim who still has an opening on her throat where wine squirts out when she hiccups? Or should I draw the line at the blind senior citizens that are dragged around by dolphins at mach 2. Or maybe I should draw the line at the deformed Chernobyl victim who has a male appendage for a nose. I’m not making any of this up. This is all in the movie and it’s all supposed to be funny.

The first Deuce Bigalow film got by with it’s charm. It was a small scale picture where the most unlikely of fellows is trying his hand at being a “man whore” to make some emergency money to save his life. Though he never physically touched these women, he touched their lives by being a friend when nobody else would accept them. Now take that story, move it to Amsterdam, mix in an entire society of Prosti-dudes, trade out the humanity for the gross-out gimmicks and you get this less creative and less funny sequel.

After saying all of that, I do have to admit that once you get past the first third of the movie and accept the dish you’ve been served, there is some joy to be found. At times I hated myself for laughing at what I was seeing but I was laughing nonetheless. Norm Macdonald absolutely steals the show with his small role (seriously, somebody give him another sitcom.) Eddie Griffin is pretty funny as the pimp suspect in the man-hoe killings, and Rob Schneider, no matter how stupid, always somehow makes me laugh. Definitely closer to being the worst movie ever than it is to being the best, European Gigolo aims low and gets a direct hit.