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If the film sounds like a cultural wake-up call remember that it's still a Sandler comedy, and there's plenty of alleged "humor" alongside the "progressive" message: the firefighters buy a "Brokeback Mountain" DVD to queer up their pad; a sexually predatory mailman boasts to James' Larry that he "delivers" sexually; a dusty ol' dropped-soap-in-a-group-shower routine; everyone from David Spade to rocker Dave Matthews reveling in limp-wristed-caricature cameos (gives new meaning to Matthews' lyrics "I did it/Do you think I've gone too far"); and, worst of all, Larry's grade-school-aged son ridiculed as a showtune-loving, EZ Bake Oven-tending homo-in-training.
Buried under so much hateful shtick, the movie's plea for tolerance comes off as more than a little insincere. But is that surprising? Crude gay stereotyping is nothing new in Sandler's lowbrow oeuvre; "Big Daddy" and "Little Nicky" also giggled immaturely at homosexuality.
More distressingly, "Chuck & Larry" highlights how gay-bashing has become a dominant laugh-generating force in mainstream comedies. Films like this and the straight-dudes-aboard-a-gay-cruise farce "Boat Trip," with premises based entirely on the notion that homosexuals are silly, are only the tip of the iceberg. Yuk-fests targeting teens ("Road Trip"), older viewers ("Wild Hogs") and action-movie fans ("Bad Boys II") regularly cater to viewer homophobia—and considering the box-office gold they've struck, it seems to be a lucrative strategy. Even a worthy comedy blockbuster like the genuinely hilarious "Wedding Crashers" featured a closet-case psycho who fetishistically painted a nude portrait of Vince Vaughn (!!).
It's worth conceding that, yes, nothing is sacred in comedy—jokes targeting sexual orientation, or race, or gender, can be funny. So if mass-appeal film comedies aren't going to halt the gay stereotyping anytime soon, they can at least aim to be a little smarter in their lampooning. Sacha Baron Cohen's queer French race-car driver in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" accomplished this. That was partly due to the "Borat" star's idiosyncratic, refreshingly non-queeny performance, but mostly because the movie, in its goofy Frat Pack way, acts as a satire of the "red state" mentality that views Baron Cohen kissing former Conan O'Brien sidekick Andy Richter (or reading a Camus paperback mid-race) as some kind of fatal threat.
Fortunately, there are also stealthily forward-thinking light entertainments like "Hairspray" —which, ironically, will compete with "Chuck & Larry" on opening weekend—to demonstrate how high-profile comedies might evolve along a more tolerant path. There's no denying that "Hairspray" could scare away potential insecure-male viewers; it originates from an '80s comedy made by openly gay icon John Waters, its visual design is pastel-heavy, the cast includes John Travolta in drag as an overeating laundress, and characters break into song and dance more often than they speak dialogue. (It's almost hard to believe there once was a time when the musical was a beloved Hollywood staple and not just fodder for a "that kid is so flaming" joke.) But it'll be difficult for anyone to resist the movie's toe-tapping seductiveness—you'd have to be a Grinch not to have fun with the film—and its narrative of a '60s dance show becoming racially integrated gleefully subverts the less open-minded current film-comedy orthodoxy represented by "Chuck & Larry."
Context, then, is key for a cinematic gay joke to resonate on a non-hateful level. What's problematic is that too many comedies are so quick to reflect a culture largely intolerant of homosexuals (sadly, votes on gay-marriage initiatives have confirmed this) that homophobia has become the default setting for genre entries attempting to address issues of sexuality. Even as it preaches tolerance, "Chuck & Larry" fails to offer up a queer character who isn't just a foolish, sex-hungry, cardboard-thin punchline. That decision defines it as a film very much of its time, albeit in the most tragic sense of the phrase imaginable.
