Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

You don’t go into theatre to see “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” and expect to see a modern classic of American Film. You go into a theatre to see the new “Deuce Bigalow” movie to see a dumb movie that may very well be funny. After all, Adam Sandler’s career was made on such movies, as was Jim Carrey’s. Rob Schneider, however, is neither Adam Sandler nor Jim Carrey. So while the dumb comedy genre has the potential to deliver big laughs, this movie doesn't. To be fair, I have seen “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” and it was surprisingly funny and far better than I expected. It offered a fairly ridiculous premise: Rob Schneider becomes a male prostitute. Right. That’s what I thought. And yet because of Schneider’s good nature and the absurd nature of his “clients”, the movie worked more often than it should have. In a place where a little went farther than it should have, Columbia Pictures decided to finance another “Deuce Bigalow” movie.

Here is the story so far: Deuce (Schneider) is still working as a fish expert, having given up the life of a gigolo when he married his wife Kate. Kate, unfortunately, was eaten by a shark two years ago because Deuce did not realize there was meat sauce on the lettuce he was feeding a sea turtle off of the coast of Mexico. Still with me? We open the movie with Deuce getting himself into a little bit of trouble because of two kids who are serious punks and mess with his research which causes a marine accident with some elderly blind people. When Deuce gets a phone call from his friend T.J. (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam, Deuce accepts the invitation to join T.J. and visit for a while. T.J. is living large as a pimp but is down on hard times (so to speak) because there is a murderer stalking the gigolos of the city. After stumbling upon a victim and somehow getting his friend implicated, Deuce decides to help T.J. discover who the real killer is by going back into business as a gigolo and investigating the crimes. Honestly, that is probably more than you need to know and it is as much as I can bear to tell about the story.

Like a “Police Academy” movie, the plot really does not matter one bit. It is an excuse to get our hero (hero?) from one situation to another and to drive the humor along. The real question should be: is this movie funny? The answer: No, not really. Much of the movie is rather stupid and parts that I think were supposed to be funny were not actually funny. Again, for the sake of honesty there were several parts that I laughed out loud at and several more that I quietly chuckled too myself. The laughs were few and far between and did not deliver nearly as much dumb humor as one would hope for. “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” was neither fun nor funny, and the only recommendation I can give is to stay away from this movie and instead watch nearly anything else, except perhaps, “Boat Trip”.

Grade: D