You have to get at least one giggle from I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry because it takes place in a magical New York City where Adam Sandler (minus the bazillion dollars he has in the bank and the Porsche he drives down the street) is a beefcake calendar superstar who carouses with the entire female staff of Hooter’s Chinatown.  I’m sure he’s a nice guy and all, but this is the kind of world where Rosie O’Donnell will be Playboy’s Miss October.    

Kevin James stars as Larry – a NYFD fireman in Brooklyn still reeling from the loss of his beloved wife a year earlier.  Because he waited too long after her death, Larry is no longer allowed to name his children as the beneficiaries of his city issued life insurance policy, and recent events worry him about their future if something should happen.  Without a better idea, Larry asks his best friend and partner in the firehouse, Chuck (Adam Sandler), to pretend to be his gay lover and life partner, so Chuck can become the beneficiary and care for his children if anything should happen.  Of course, the situation becomes complicated when the city sends its top fraud investigator out to authenticate their love for each other, and Chuck starts to get the hots for their lawyer, Alex (Jessica Beil). 

Will Chuck and Larry’s fraud be discovered?  Will Chuck blow it by putting the moves on their lawyer?

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry isn’t funny enough when trying to make you laugh, and not heartfelt enough when it wants to be sweet and loving.  Writers Barry Fanaro, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne (an Oscar winner for Sideways, so I assume and hope he only helped knock this one out to pay his divorce lawyer) give us every typical homophobic joke that made people laugh in 1977, but you’ve heard them about 1000 times by now, so it’s not so funny anymore, even if that’s your thing.  Plus, think about the plot for 10 seconds and you’ll realize it is even too absurd for a movie.  A HEROIC NEW YORK FIREFIGHTER is not allowed to make arrangements for the CARE OF HIS CHILDREN AFTER HIS WIFE DIES because of some baloney bureaucratic rule.  Are we to believe they also rejected him in a letter dated September 11?  I’ll suspend disbelief for Harry Potter or Transformers, but this kind of movie needs to do better.   

Then, director Dennis Dugan and the editing team make almost every scene too long.  Just as you think you are about to move on, Dugan still tries to force more dialogue and jokes, without much of a positive effect.  He doesn’t devote enough time to the investigation of Chuck and Larry, so the climactic showdown isn’t very exciting.  He doesn’t build up enough about Larry’s love for his former wife, so that story feels incomplete.  The movie just wanders along.    

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry isn’t as good as anything Sandler or James have done before.

1 Waffle (Out of 4)

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is rated PG-13 for crude sexual content throughout, nudity, language, and drug references. 

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