The bowling comedy Kingpin probably won't make any filmlover's top 10 list -- unless the list happens to be top 10 movies about Amish bowlers -- but it's still a harmless diversion. True, there are times when the subject matters skates dangerously close to bad taste, but it never really falls in, if only because the Amish farmer ends up back on his farm and the disabled veteran with a severed hand somehow ends up landing the supermodel. You'd think a plot synopsis like that would earn big laughs, but I found the big laughs to be relatively sparse, and the movie to be quite plot-heavy.
It's directed by brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who have carved a small living out of intentionally choosing taboo areas and exploiting them for all they're worth. In There's Something About Mary, it was mentally handicapped people. In Dumb and Dumber, it was blind people. Here, it's the Amish, who admittedly make for ripe targets considering they will most likely never even see this movie. The trick is, how do you set up your jokes without necessarily antagonizing or insulting your audience? Answer: You go for the joke. In all three of the above-mentioned movies, the Farrellys play their gags on the most basic of levels: it's not that a disabled person falls down, it's that a person falls down at all. That they are disabled becomes a character trait, and not really part of the true punchline.
Anyway, Kingpin is about the woeful and balding Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson), who has had to forfeit his dream of becoming a pro bowler because his hand was jammed into a ball waxing machine in his youth. Enter Ishmael (Randy Quaid), an Amish man with an apparent knack for bowling. Roy offers to become Ishmael's manager, and the two set out for a $1 million tournament in Reno (Roy wants the money to redeem his wounded pride, Ishmael wants the money to save his farm from foreclosure). I particularly enjoyed the last half hour, with Bill Murray as the womanizing obstacle and a tacky head of hair that defies gravity.
This week the Farrelly Brothers released yet another new movie, Shallow Hal, to surprisingly positive critical praise. It targets obese people. At this rate, I'm guessing future possible targets in their pictures will include cancer, AIDS and heart attacks. And you know what? In spite of ourselves, we'll probably still be laughing right along.
