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I didn't really care for "Barry Munday" at first -- it seemed like a run-of-the-mill dopey sex comedy -- but I liked where it ended up.
I think a lot of people -- well, at least those with a Y chromosome -- can understand my initially being put off. This is a movie about a guy who gets his testicles sliced off.
Yeah. Exactly.
Genital mutilation is about as funny a subject as, I dunno, baby cannibalism. Just introducing Barry Munday as a guy who got his balls cut off instantly made me want to walk out of the theater. Well, actually I was watching the movie on DVD -- a perk of being a critic and jurist. But you know what I mean.
But I soldiered on, and the movie rewarded me for doing so. It morphed from a lamebrain comedy about horny guys into something that was actually really sweet.
This indie written and directed by Chris D'Arienzo (from the book by Frank Turner Hollon) is chock full of name actors: Patrick Wilson, Judy Greer, Chloe Sevigny, Jean Smart, Cybill Shepherd, Missi Pyle, Christopher McDonald, Malcolm McDowell and Billy Dee Williams (!).
It's the sort of movie that tries to make believe that beautiful people are ugly, and for awhile it convinces us. Wilson stars as Barry, a thirtysomething nothing who works (barely) at an insurance company and spends his nights drinking and pitifully (but occasionally successfully) carousing for one-night stands.
Greer plays Ginger, a homely tight-wound girl who lost her virginity to Barry in one of those aforementioned debauches. Barry doesn't even remember having sex with Ginger, but the baby growing in her belly -- and the paternity suit her lawyer threatens him -- are pretty convincing.
The impregnation, of course, occurred before Barry was emasculated. This happens in a movie theater while Barry is hitting on an underage girl, and her father catches them and unmans him with a trumpet.
(Why a trumpet, other than the goof factor, is unclear. The opening credits show the guy getting it from a nearby music store. Did he pay for it? If so, who buys a $400 trumpet instead of finding a 2-by-4 in an alley? And it seems like a solid-body guitar would've done more damage. Anyway.)
Barry's a selfish screw-up, but he finds the idea of having a kid comforting -- especially now that his options regarding family life are, shall we say, curtailed. Heretofore he has not been a hearth-and-home type:
"Marriage? No thanks. Kids? They smell and grow up to hate you and take your money."
He agrees to become a full partner in raising the child, much to Ginger's astonishment and resentment. Her family hates his guts, of course, though her much prettier and more successful sister (Chloe Sevigny) plays footsies under the table, and perhaps elsewhere if he'll let her.
It was around this point that the movie was seeming pretty contrived and silly, about a half-step up from an unpromising sitcom. And then something strange happens: Barry starts to get his shit together, acting like a grown-up, and finds out the hateful Ginger isn't all bad. She's just been ignored and told she's unattractive all her life, and found a certain solace in checking out romantically.
Judy Greer shines in this role, as she often has in supporting performances in mainstream movies. She's so good at playing the wing woman, in fact, that her name has become a term used to describe actresses who are pretty and talented enough to be stars, but always get stuck in the best friend part. I don't know why. I think audiences, especially female ones, would find Greer much easier to relate to than, say, Katherine Heigl.
Altogether, "Barry Munday" turns out to be a pretty decent movie. Writer/director D'Arienzo, a rookie, is still finding his sense of comic timing, but shows promise. Whoda thunkit: The philandering hound dog had to get neutered to learn how to be a man.
3.5 Yaps