Today’s Prayer Focus
MOVIE REVIEW

The Heartbreak Kid

also known as “Seven Day Itch,” “Lo Spaccacuori,” “Sekaisin suhteessa”
MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for strong sexual content, crude humor and language.

Reviewed by: Spencer Schumacher
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Extremely Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Romance Comedy Drama Remake
Length: 1 hr. 55 min.
Year of Release: 2007
USA Release: October 5, 2007 (wide)
Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG Copyright, DreamWorks SKG
Relevant Issues
Copyright, DreamWorks SKG

Every time you buy a movie ticket or rent a video you are casting a vote telling Hollywood “That’s what I want.” Why does Hollywood continue to promote immoral programming? Are YOU part of the problem?

Dating and Sex

What are the biblical guidelines for dating relationships? Answer

Should I save sex for marriage? Answer

What are the consequences of sexual immorality? Answer

Fornication

How can I deal with temptations? Answer

Sex, Love and Relationships
Learn how to make your love the best it can be. Christian answers to questions about sex, marriage, sexual addictions, and more. Valuable resources for Christian couples, singles and pastors.
Adultery

What does the Bible say about adultery? Answer

Divorce

Christian Divorce and Remarriage—Under what conditions may Christians divorce and remarry? Answer

Divorce in the Bible

What does it mean to be “the husband of one wife”? Answer

Marriage

Is formalized marriage becoming obsolete? Answer
Many people are convinced that traditional marriages don’t work and that this practice should be abandoned. What does the Bible say about marriage?

Featuring Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Jerry Stiller, Rob Corddry, Carlos Mencia, Scott Wilson, Danny McBride, Stephanie Courtney, Polly Holliday, Roy Jenkins
Director Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Producer Marc S. Fischer, John Davis, Joe Rosenberg
Distributor
Distributor: Dreamworks. Trademark logo.
DreamWorks Pictures
, aka DreamWorks Studios, a production label of Amblin Partners

“Love hurts.”

In 1998 the Farrelly Brothers (King Pin, Fever Pitch) teamed up with Ben Stiller to introduce a new kind of hair gel, nine years later the three have teamed up to push bad taste to new depths.

Eddie (Ben Stiller) pressured by his father (real life father, Jerry Stiller) to settle down, gets married to Lila who he meets while coming to her rescue when she is apparently robbed and has her purse stolen. Though he barely knows her, Lila seems to be the girl of his dreams and so they marry and set off to find fantasy in a Cabo San Lucas honeymoon.

The fantasy turns into a nightmare as Eddie soon realizes Lila is not the woman he imagined. Determined to make the marriage work he decides to ‘suck it up’. While out on a moonlight walk of reflecting Eddie runs into Miranda, who is in Cabo with her family celebrating a family anniversary. Because of a series of interruptions and misunderstandings Eddie is never able to tell Miranda he is married and starts hanging out with her and her family, who become very endearing to Eddie.

The romance of the story is Eddie finding that he is really in love with Miranda and searching for a way to break off the marriage to Lila without breaking her heart.

The performances by Stiller and the rest of the cast are fine, but unless you are fond of crude, bodily-function humor this romantic-comedy is neither very funny, nor very romantic.

If there ever was truth in advertising it’s the TV spots for this movie which claim that most of the movie is too offensive to be shown in a prime time ad. Well, for once a trailer delivers exactly what it promises. The movie is intentionally offensive and anyone offended by the type of humor demonstrated in Farrelly Brothers movies like ‘Something about Mary’ would be advised to skip this one. The movie is rated ‘R’ and earns every ounce of its rating with continuous vulgarity consisting of the regular four letter expressions, and instances where the writers create their own form of hybrid multi-word conglomerations of profanity. There are a couple sex scenes that are fairly explicit with the accompanying nudity. There is a suggested scene of beastiality between a woman and a donkey which leaves nothing up to the imagination in terms of how well the animal is endowed. There are scenes of crude, bathroom humor and bodily function jokes involving Lila’s deviated septum.

When all is said and done the movie offers very little as far as a redemptive change in Eddie. Though we sympathize for the predicament Eddie has put himself in with his rush to matrimony, he continues to deceive, lie and cheat while pursuing one woman while married to another. If the movie has any redeeming qualities, it definitely sends the message to take your time before getting married, unfortunately you have to go through a lot of unsavory celluloid to get to this little nugget of truth.

The film is rated R and runs 115 minutes.

Violence: Mild / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Heavy

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative—As a Christian, I believe sex is sacred and not to be desecrated in order to sell movie tickets. This movie had every kind of vulgarity in it that I can thing of, including a woman openly pulling down her pants and peeing on another person who is laying on the beach. It also had a number of very lighted bedroom sex acts which would embarass any sailor. Don’t give Hollywood the idea that we like this kind of movie by buying a ticket.
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 3
Richard Giesman, age 67
Negative—Gag, this film is pretty much porn. Not at all what the previews suggest. Our theater usually doesn’t show R-rated films. We went in expecting a romantic comedy. It was a total waste of money with no redeeming qualities.
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 3
Tammy Solether, age 48
Negative—Are You a Christian? If so, you WILL be offended by Hollywood’s latest offering of so called “entertainment.” Nothing funny about the “Bible Belt” being equated with “Those guys have guns!” Imagine Hollywood making an offhanded remark about muslims exploding themselves around Jews and Christians in Mexico, for whatever reason. It wouldn’t fly. But, in Hollywood—Christians are a prime target for every chance they can and will take. So, just expect it. Hollywood Hates Christians! Hollywood is proving that American culture is declined immensly after 30 years with the female urinating on the male for the “Screen.” Along with acceptance of gays as normal, changing sex partners in marriage faster than titles on a Theatre Marquee. Is that what we want—as an American Culture??? The Heartbreak Kid 2007 is about legally changing sex partners based on emotional lies, not mistakes.
My Ratings: Very Offensive / 5
Dennis, age 53
Negative—We saw the trailer for this movie, catching the funny outtakes and thinking this was a decent Ben Stiller movie. We were very surprised—we had high regards for Ben Stiller before seeing this moving. First, I am a writer. When I go to a movie, I am looking for character development, plot development, and an overall wrap-up and conclusion. I look for good acting and sub-plots to make a good movie great. The best acting in this movie was with Michelle Monaghan when she is relating to an intense moment with Ben Stiller when she thought he was a widower. Otherwise, Ben Stiller was just going through the moves, Jerry Stiller was just using profanity to get a knee-jerk reaction from the audience, and Malin Akerman was barely believeable in her role. The other actors/actresses were no better than walk-ons reading their lines and following their cues.

Second, the morality rating on this movie is non-existant. I’m not sure where the line is between an R rated movie and porn, but this movie must be fairly close to the line. I found parts of the movie uncomfortable to sit through with my wife and asked her a few times if she wanted to leave—we decided the wait through the bad parts to see if the movie picked up. We should have left. In hind site, these parts were strictly gratuitous, as there are other ways to portray the weirdness of the new wife without showing all the skin and giving us the close-up shots that were just plain unnecessary.

Third, the Lord calls us to a role of mutual respect in marriage. Not only did the characters in this movie exhibit disrespectful behavior toward marriage, but also disrespect toward family. The character Ben Stiller plays shares a crude joke with a family while in Mexico, which was way out of line and unbelieveable—I cannot see a right minded person sharing that kind of a joke with a family he just met, irregardless of children being present or not. The Ben Stiller character lies to his wife to cover up his relationship with Miranda, then he feeds into the whole concepts of a lie he told earlier.

This movie promotes a wrong kind of dating concept instead of a Biblical courting relationship before marriage. It uses children and young teens to talk about alternate lifestyles, uses senior citizens to try to get a laugh with crude language and unbecoming screen shots, exhibits no respect for marriage, and has scenes where the characters say or do something completely out of character and unbelieveable.

In the end, the conclusion of the movie was as real of a disappointment as the entire plot. I will not give it away other than to say, we want characters in stories to learn from their mistakes as we like to think we would—when we see a character make the same mistake over and over again, we eventually want to see the character learn from this mistake and by the end of the movie, overcome the qualities or situations causing the mistake. While I recognize the crude joke behind the ending scene, it cheats the audience out of a conclusion we so much want to see in a movie. This is definitely one where many people will be saying the same thinng my wife said as leaving the theater, 'That ending stunk.'

Overall, this movie is an extreme disappointment, a low mark in Ben Stiller’s career, and a waste of money.
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 2
Glenn Sasscer, Jr., age 41
Negative—The only reason I did not give this movie the lowest rating possible is because, for a brief moment, there was a funny part that I appreciated. I saw this movie with a male friend of mine. Ben Stiller did bring a certain amount of humor to his character. But, for the most part, the movie lacked any true plot that would be worth watching. Sitting in the movie theater, I was thinking to myself 'Okay… when is the movie really going to start.'

Nudity was completely uncalled for, but not surprising. My comment is going to be blunt, and I apologize for being so graphic, but during the sex scenes of this movie, it actually felt like the characters were having sex right in front of me because of how upclose and personal the cameras were. No male nudity is in this movie. Only topless women (which is bad enough)… but I thought it was very poorly written and directed. Basically, this man decides to get married because he is getting older and does not want to miss out on this “once in a lifetime chance.” This movie completely takes away the true meaning of a Christian marriage. I would not recommend this movie to anyone.
My Ratings: Very Offensive / 1½
Jaclyn, age 23
Negative—After the first half hour of the movie, I thought maybe it would be more beneficial to walk out immediately and go eat lunch instead. However, I decided to stay for another hour. And then I walked out about 45 minutes before it was over, because I didn’t care how it ended. It was that bad.
My Ratings: Very Offensive / 2
Lauren, age 24
Negative—This movie is so offensive, we had to leave. There are several questionable scenes. We thought after the first one it would be over and they would go on with the plot, but the nudity kept coming until finally we left. The offensiveness is so overpowering, that it was not funny or romantic.
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 3
Celeste, age 28
Negative—I find disappointment in myself that I am able to admit that I’ve seen this film in it’s entirety. Sadly, through the credits and find it really hard to believe that the reviewer thought the quality of this movie deserved four stars. I realize a typical Farelly brothers film relies on crude humor to breathe it life but this one was unoriginal, completely classless and relied more on over-the-edge shock value than necessary. There is a point when humor loses it’s funny at the expense of it seeking to offend it’s audience. That isn’t quality film making, it’s called juvenile.

It lacked in plot, the dialogue was pathetic, the storyline and any slight semblance to a value system was far more offensive than it’s raunchy sex obsessed humor… I could go on and on, and there could never be enough adjectives to cover this movie. I am NOT easily offended, and yet a knot of nausea formed and rested in my gut through this film. It’s a horrible, well casted B-movie at best. Aside from the two Stiller men, and even they weren’t redemptive enough for me, there is nothing positive, humorous or redemptive about this movie. It’s easily one of the WORST films I have seen and this goes for content as well as quality… And that isn’t a list that’s easily made…
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 2
Misty Wagner, age 31
Negative—This movie was beyond bad. It has absolutely no sense of creativity or plot. Morally lacking in every way, the movie is void of any element that would make me want to rate it better than extremely offensive. I was horrified by the nudity, crude humor, and dishonesty. Do not sit through the whole movie thinking it will get better. It doesn’t! Nothing changes and the movie just keeps getting worse. This movie fails to show any biblical truth to the veiwer. I saw it at the dollar theatre, and it still was a complete waste of my time and money. Very disappointing!
My Ratings: Extremely Offensive / 3
Andrea Reed, age 36
Negative—I thought this movie was going to be a funny romantic comedy… well, I was very wrong. It was raunchy/disgusting… I couldn’t believe how bad it was in many ways. I couldn’t even finish it, I don’t believe I even got near half-way through the movie… I had to turn it off and so glad I did… heard it didn’t get any better either. I ordered it on my On-Demand… it was a biggest waste of $4.99 ever! If my husband and I would have seen it in the theater-we would have walked out as well. The way they portrayed the married couple 'making love'… was so disgusting… I couldn’t watch it… it made me feel so dirty. They didn’t need to have the nudity and the extreme raunchiness like they did… not necessary at all. The way they portrayed marriage was just gross… not the way I would ever want my marriage. When I talk to my friends about movies I tell them to stay far away from this movie-it is vulgar, raunchy, and just disgusting… not funny and not worth a second of your time. Two friends I have talked to have seen this (well one turned it off as well) and agreed that it was the WORST movie! The best thing I did was turn it off.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 2½
Destiny Carter, age 29
Negative—This movie is terrible, and I usually don’t mind “gross out” films. Ben Stiller’s character started disliking his wife for such stupid reasons (like her singing or having a fat mother) and soon falls in love with another woman. I had absolutely no sympathy for his character at all and was depising him by the end. this movie had no respect for marriage or for the viewers of this movie who are expected to laugh at revolting scenes including beastiality.

don’t watch this movie
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 2
Hayley, age 27
Negative—Movies like this usually don’t bother me, but this is the only movie I have ever stopped watching. I was on a date when I saw this movie. I think we were both expecting something different because an uncomfortable air filled the room. The guy (who’s a fan of Animal House type movies) suggested we watch another movie instead. Trust me, I’m not a prude, but the deciding factor was the topless sex scene followed by a discussion of pubic hair. The movie just wasn’t funny. It was just going for the shock factor. The movie didn’t start out that bad, but I agree that Ben Stiller’s character really irritated me. He was annoyed at the girl for such stupid reasons. I’m still surprised that I actually stopped watching the movie. I was excited to see it, and I just assumed it would be like other movies in the crude humor genre, but it isn’t.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 2
Hb, age 19