Anthony's Film Review - Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005)

This comedy, though not the worst, can still be skipped because of its gross-out jokes and amateurish script...

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, the 2005 sequel to the 1999 comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, is a movie that I knew was going to be stupid and potentially disgusting. The real question was to what degree is this movie stupid and disgusting. The film reviewer in me said to watch the film and find out. Now that I've done so, I can say that this movie is definitely more than stupid and disgusting enough for me to not recommend it. Now, is it the bottom of the barrel? It sort of comes close, but I must admit that I've seen worse.

Anyway, the title character of Deuce Bigalow, played by Rob Schneider, is a male prostitute, or man-whore, as this movie calls such characters. His former pimp, a man named T.J. Hicks, played by Eddie Griffin, is currently hanging out in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. While Deuce visits T.J. in Amsterdam, another man-whore gets murdered in an alley. Seeing that a comrade has fallen, Deuce and T.J. try to solve the mystery as they fear that other man-whores, who actually have formed a union in Europe, may become the next victim.

Strangely enough, I found the story to be sort of engaging so that I never got bored with following it. Plus, the events made basic sense, like how Deuce obtains the murdered man-whore's client list and offers his services to the women on the list in order to find the killer. Even more surprising is how I sort of liked seeing Deuce find a love interest in Eva, a young Dutch woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder, played by Hanna Verboom. Still, the execution of the whole story felt very rushed a lot of the time, as if the writers figured that as long as the events are understood, there's no need to explore them in further depth.

But the script isn't the only thing that ruins the movie experience. The gross-out jokes are another. One of Deuce's clients is a woman with a tracheostomy (a hole in the front of her neck), which is an opportunity for jokes about excessive cigarette smoke and wine pouring out. While this isn't necessarily disgusting, it's certainly offensive to people in real life who have the same predicament. Another example of a strange client is a Russian woman who, due to radiation from Chernobyl, was born with a penis for a nose. The phallus nose is never seen explicitly, because it's covered by a veil the whole time, but there's still an erection joke and an ejaculation joke (when she sneezes).

For me, the absolutely lowest scene involves two shocking moments with T.J. Imagine a scene that involves not one, but two gross-out jokes back to back. (WARNING: The rest of this paragraph contains explicit details. Feel free to skip to the next paragraph.) First, T.J. begins eating French fries in a woman's bathroom but accidentally drops the food into the toilet. For whatever reason in his filthy mind, he proceeds to pick up the wet fries and eat them. Then, while urinating, a cat bites his genitals and hangs on. The horrible part isn't so much the bite itself, but what T.J. does to try to break free: using violent force to try to get the cat off in a way that only hurts him and the cat.

Basically, what we have here is a movie with a plot that's presented in a lazy fashion and an ensemble of jokes that are mostly not funny or just plain crude (often, it's both). Like I said, the story was something to follow, so I give the movie a tiny amount of credit for that. And I will also admit that maybe two or three jokes were mildly funny. But otherwise, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is a forgettable movie that mainly appeals to the most dirty-minded people. For the rest of us, watching it would make no difference whatsoever.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, visit the Internet Movie Database.